


you can hold my hand if no one's home

by knapp_shappeys



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Airplane Crashes, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, MJN Air Is A Family, Theresa-centric (Mostly)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27713930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knapp_shappeys/pseuds/knapp_shappeys
Summary: Post-Zurich. A widebody jet should not go missing after making an emergency landing at a former Soviet airbase. A princess should not have to sit on unforgiving tile in a forgotten corner of Zurich airport waiting for inevitable news.They should not have to go through this.
Relationships: Martin Crieff/Theresa of Liechtenstein
Comments: 28
Kudos: 15
Collections: Project Theresa (Theresa Takeover 2016)





	1. do you like it when I'm away?

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer: All in-air procedures have been abbreviated and/or done away with, entirely for dramatic purposes. Not intended for use in education or training.**
> 
> I downloaded Tiktok as a joke and now I have this. Inspired by (and all titles from) [“Line Without a Hook”](https://youtu.be/8JW6qzPCkE8) by Ricky Montgomery, which, when I started writing this, was experiencing a vogue period on tiktok. Well that’s quite enough of that, let’s go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a cold morning, a snowy plain. however much they’ve practiced for this, a simulator is not a match for the real thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d like to preface this by providing the oft-cited statistic that there is only an approximately 1 in 11 million chance of being involved in a plane crash. Comparatively, there is a 1 in 3000 chance of being hit by lightning. Commercial aviation is heavily regulated, and the actions and procedures of flight crew are built from a foundation of over a century’s worth of experiences, tragedies, and successes.
> 
> Major CW for depiction of plane crash, depiction of a brain injury, and mentions of past disasters and fatalities.

In a tiny compartment high above some desolate snowy plain, a pilot jumped awake and stared at the ceiling, heart knocking a nervous staccato high in his throat.

Junior first officer heavy Martin Crieff briefly wondered what had roused him from his government-mandated slumber. Almost as if on cue, the widebody jet he’d called home since leaving Beijing half a day before rocked to one side. 

Martin reached over and grasped hold of the edge of the bunk, looking all about until he found the speaker built into the wall of his flight crew rest compartment. Perhaps if he willed it hard enough, his colleagues currently taking their turn at the controls in the adjacent flightdeck might care enough to beam him and his sleeping captain a message. Perhaps an explanation of what had just happened?

He wasn’t very sure how these sorts of things worked on long-haul flights.

In a way, Martin had made it. After less than three years of flying short-haul around the Schengen area, on the cusp of making the rank of junior captain, he’d been invited—not assigned, _invited_ —to form part of Swiss Air’s long-haul starting lineup.

Falling down the ranking ladder yet again, but hadn’t he dreamed of working long-haul? Flying the big birds, coaxing these massive marvels of engineering and design off the ground with a twitch of the yoke and throttles—wasn’t that how he’d imagined himself, sitting in Wokingham as a child with a well-worn copy of a flight magazine drooping in his hands while he stared at the sky?

And maybe he had to carry around a custom-made seat cushion so he could passably fly visual, and maybe his colleagues referred to it as the “Crieff Cushion” whenever he pulled it out of his flight bag, but still! What luck!

The plane rocked again, this time to the opposite side. 

What was it, an in-air evasive maneuver? But what kind of a maneuver would autopilot need to make, all alone in the icy north?

Martin rolled back over and fished for his watch, which he’d tossed into his toiletry bag before settling in for his sleep. _0547 UTC._ He was nowhere near the designated wake-up time, but there was no use now in going back to sleep.

Sitting up in his bunk, he stretched and tried to recall the breakfast service. He felt much like he would enjoy a croissant that morning. A croissant and coffee. Yes, that would do nicely. He was already looking forward to it. 

Suddenly, the all-too-melodic chime rang from the wall-mounted speaker, and for the second time this morning, Martin Crieff jumped. 

He checked his watch again and frowned. _0552 UTC_ , far from the 0630 wake-up time.

The chime rang a second time; now, Martin’s curiosity had been piqued. Zipping up his toiletry bag, he fastened his watch, slipped out of his pajamas, and began to change into his uniform. 

He’d just clipped his tie (black, red stripes) to his shirt when the chime rang out a third time.

“I’m coming,” he called irritably to nobody in particular, muscling on his jacket and slipping in his shoes.

Stumbling into the narrow passageway connecting the crew rest areas to the flight deck, he nearly ran into Leonie, an experienced French captain and the other pilot heavy on this flight. “Sorry, Leonie,” he gasped. “Morning.”

“Crieff.” She nodded brusquely. “Any clue why we’ve been called early three times?”

“Not a clue. Bagsy on the crew restroom.”

“Oh, you know I don’t—Screw you, Crieff.”

Martin grinned, just as the plane lurched again.

“ _Merde!_ ” Leonie braced her back against one of the walls. “What the _hell_ are they doing up there?”

The door to the flightdeck burst open. “Pilots! We’ve been calling. Come...quick.” 

“Pierre?” Leonie squinted at the figure. “Pierre, we have names.”

“Let’s go,” Martin tossed over his shoulder, instantly on the alert. Perhaps something had gone wrong? That would explain the lurching, the early wake-up call.

They burst into the flightdeck, following Pierre, who staggered into the first officer’s seat and feverishly straightened out his shirt.

“What’s going on here, Hans?” Leonie demanded of the captain, immediately unlocking one of the observation jumpseats. She motioned for Martin to buckle himself in and put on his headset, and Martin obeyed, leaning forward to survey what was happening.

“Why don’t you have a look and see for yourself?” For the first time, Martin noticed the sides of Hans’ uniform shirt were wet down with sweat. Hans was a veteran pilot, a luftwaffe reserve who flew Northrop F-5 Tiger IIs around the perimeter of the country whenever he was asked to. If he was anxious now, something was terribly wrong.

“Leonie,” Martin turned to his captain and began slowly. “Maybe…”

Leonie leaned over the back of Hans’ seat and read the screen he was pointing to. “Number two engine bleed malfunction? Can’t be…”

“Ja,” Hans scowled. “Got it checked out back in Peking. The engineers said they’d fixed it.”

“Leonie…” Martin leaned over and began pulling out the additional jumpseat. “Leonie, wait—”

From about a hundred feet behind them came the unmistakable sound of an engine quitting its job, corroborated moments later by a jarring blare from the warning systems and a sudden roll and yaw toward the number two engine.

Leonie cried out as the sudden jolt threw her sideways into a panel, where she crumpled to the floor.

Those still up froze for only a moment before the training kicked in.

“Get Leonie,” Hans yelled over his shoulder to Martin as he adjusted flaps and rudder to combat the slideslip.

The pilots flying reached for their oxygen masks. The loss of engine bleed air compromised the pressurization system, and Martin assumed the cabin masks had dropped as well. If the passengers didn’t know something had happened, they certainly would now. Not only that, but giving the pilots currently flying a few breaths more of oxygen would give them a boost in alertness—something necessary for what they’d have to do.

“Autopilot off. Engine failure procedures.” Hans called out loudly, disconnecting autopilot and canceling the cacophonous complaints of the aircraft systems. 

“Engine failure procedures,” Pierre echoed, unlocking and scrolling through his tablet with hands that were only slightly shaking—after all, they’d prepared for this exact scenario in the simulator hundreds of times, their performances for the examiner graded and debriefed to pieces. “Throttles full forward.”

“Throttles full forward.”

“Mixtures full rich.”

“Yes, mixtures full rich.”

Martin adjusted the band attaching his mask to his own head as he tried to get to where Leonie was on the floor, mumbling something drawn-out in French as she clutched her head. It was more deserving of the word _mask_ than the passengers’ yellow cups, he thought momentarily, before shaking himself out of it.

“Leonie, can you get up?” he asked, trying not to let the sound of Pierre and Hans running through their checklist distract him from his task.

“ _What?_ ” She stared blankly at him. “My ears. They ring.”

“I said, can you get up?” Martin asked louder.

“Martin, she’s probably concussed! Just get her off the floor and into the jumpseat, and get a mask on her face,” Hans barked at him before adjusting flaps as per the checklist. Martin cursed himself: there was a microphone in the oxygen masks connecting each of the pilots over a single frequency, and he knew that yelling at Leonie through it was only clogging the intercom between Hans and Pierre.

“Right. Okay, I’m going to get you up,” Martin muttered, more for his benefit than for Leonie’s. Stooping, he hoisted her up and into the unfolded jumpseat by her underarms. Nodding in thanks, she began to clumsily buckle herself into the seat.

“Your mask,” Martin whispered, unhooking the oxygen mask from its place by her station and fastening it over her face. It looked much like one of those cheap European full-face snorkel masks, but significantly more technologically advanced in that it was designed to deliver oxygen directly into the wearer’s lungs. 

He checked the buckles of her safety harness to make sure she’d correctly fastened everything in place and staggered back to his station.

Again, a thought intruded upon Martin as he found his way back to his jumpseat, this time of Arthur’s reaction the first time he saw him and Douglas trying on their oxygen masks before a transatlantic flight. What was it that he said they looked like? Wasn’t it some character from _Star Wars?_

Martin shook his head again and buckled himself back into his jumpseat.

Through his headset, he could hear Hans and Pierre calling every single air traffic controller in the vicinity, turning their radio frequencies to emergency settings, and figuring out which airfield they could possibly land at, all while coaxing the plane lower in the sky to combat rapid loss of cabin pressure and trade altitude for airspeed.

Something else flashed into his mind, ripping his attention away, for once in his life, from operating procedures.

On the ground, the world is frighteningly large; the grand scheme and dance of life equally massive. From the air, everything we’ve ever created is achingly small. Without the firmness of layers of stone and dirt and molten rock, we lose our sense of security. There is nothing between us and the ground but air and remembrance, the ghosts of those who cry out for justice. Justice against whatever: against lax regulations, against faulty technology, unethical engineers, cost-cutting measures. The wind cries for vengeance beneath your feet: against corners cut and deals made between manufacturers and government regulators. Against bailouts handed over the heads of crying, hungry families.

A long time ago, passengers in airplanes sat in wicker chairs with no belts. The use of anti-collision systems were not widespread until a collision above a sunny California city led to a loss of all souls on board both aircraft and nine in the houses that the planes fell into. A competition between airplane manufacturers and a cozy relationship between a government and a corporation led to the loss of 350 souls.

The breeze also screams against war, against suffering, against hatred, unmanned puppets operated from far away by hungry teenagers who’d been sold free college education and a tainted sense of pride. 

These cries are the loudest, but they don’t reach the right people that often. The walls of fighter jets are constructed out of taxpayer funds and subsidies and postgraduate opportunities.

“What, _that_ airfield?” Pierre spat into his microphone after receiving information from ATC as to their nearest option for an emergency landing. He scrolled through his tablet, ostensibly looking at a map. “The runway’s not anywhere near long enough for this plane. I doubt it’s even been used since this was still the Soviet Union.”

“Well, Pierre, do you have a better idea?” Hans asked dryly, stabilizing the aircraft as it threatened to lean toward the dead engine again.

Pierre steamed silently for a moment, before Martin saw him shake his head. “I don’t. But we could overrun the runway if we take it.”

“And we’ll drop out of the sky if we don’t.”

“We might break the plane in half.”

“Not if we’re careful to stop it.”

Martin tuned them out and turned back to Leonie. “Leonie. Can you hear me?”

She looked back at him a little blankly. “Yeah.”

“How does your head feel?”

“It’s okay. I guess. No, it’s not. It’s like something’s pressing in my head.”

“Your...like your skull?”

“No, not my skull, my brain or something…”

“Quiet back there, please,” Hans admonished, breaking into their conversation. “We need to communicate with ATC one more time, then before we try to make a descent we’ll brief you and the passengers.”

“Sorry,” Martin replied meekly, turning away from Leonie.

A few minutes later, Hans left Pierre to keep the plane steady and turned to the other two pilots. “I’m going to keep this as short as possible. ATC is clearing us to land at an old Soviet-era air base. As you’ve probably heard, the runway’s short, because it’s so old and it hasn’t been touched since the Cold War. Therefore we’ll be preparing for…” Hans took a deep breath. “A landing that’ll be less soft than normal.”

He stayed silent for a second, letting the implication sit between them. “I think we’ll be okay, though. ATC wouldn’t have let us go there if they didn’t think it was possible for us to walk away from it, and we are losing airspeed faster than we are losing altitude. We have to do this. Are we in agreement? Leonie?” Hans turned first to the captain.

“I’m not in any state to make that decision, Hans,” Leonie protested. “Martin.”

“What?”

“Martin, it’s your ball.”

“...I think the word’s _call._ ”

“ _Martin!_ ”

Hans looked expectantly at Martin. “So?”

Martin hesitated, then nodded. 

“Good. I am going to direct the cabin crew to prepare for emergency landing. You two, stay up here, the pressurization systems are still faulty. You know what to do. Assume the brace position, and...keep your head down, not back.” He moistened his lips, looking stricken. “We should be landing in a few minutes.”

“Godspeed,” Leonie muttered. Straightening her back against the flightdeck wall, she locked her knees together, tucked her feet back, loosely crossed her hands over the back of her neck, and bent her chin to her chest. In a daze, Martin copied her but didn’t bow his head, transfixed by the pilots flying in front of him.

“Yes.” Hans turned and made arrangements with the cabin crew over their intercoms before going on the main address system to tell everyone to brace.

There’s another thing that arises from the way height robs humanity of security. Isn’t it funny that at the times when we feel that our lives are most in jeopardy, our thoughts turn to some past disagreement, or missed chance, or squandered opportunity? 

The truth was this: Martin had been a little scared of landing back in Zurich again, of descending the escalator and scanning the crowd looking for a princess standing among those waiting for their loved ones and colleagues. 

They had argued. He had said something he should not have. She had dropped him off at the airport, like she’d always done, but she’d left without a word.

Maybe he was scared that when he descended the escalator and tried to find her face in the crowd, she wouldn’t be there.

And now, for all intents and purposes, he was likely preparing to die.

“Martin!” Leonie’s voice, fearful and cracking, was pulling him out of his regret.

They were scrambling to the top of a hill overlooking Vaduz. Theresa’s favorite overlook spot. The trees carpeting the sides of the mountains were turning to red and gold, autumn foliage gleaming in the Liechtenstein sun.

She turned back and smiled at him. _Like it?_

From here, the city was a school project, a model built by a student to satisfy some kind of requirement, to demonstrate having learned some hitherto unknown skill.

“Martin! Put your head down!”

_Am I...am I truly that. To you? Do you really…?_

“ _Martin!_ ”

Outside the glass windows of the flightdeck, the snowy landscape was growing closer and closer. Martin made out a set of dilapidated greyish buildings against the pale, skinny sticks that must have passed for trees in this hostile world, and

"Our nose is too high up!"

_I swear you’re not, I don’t know what I was saying there but whatever it was I didn’t mean it!_

_You did._

A dark shape flew toward his head; Martin ducked out of the way and

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Theresa’s coming soon. This fic is going to be mostly Theresa-centric. 
> 
> [A relevant blog about pilot oxygen masks.](https://aerosavvy.com/your-oxygen-mask-vs-my-oxygen-mask/)
> 
> The collision referenced is the PSA Flight 182 disaster, which happened in 1978.
> 
> I should thank Lucy (sircarolyn on tumblr, timeladyleo here) for putting me in the mood with her “horrible hercolyn advent” stories, which I somehow read in a row and survived. much love! <3


	2. mama never really learned how to live by herself (it’s a curse)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a birthday party is interrupted by news that, surprisingly, affects more than one person in attendance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for description of a corpse.

They had allowed her a leave of absence when she got the news, which came in a verbose email from Katherine Valerie (in trademark pink font, because what else would her second-youngest sister use?) 

_Three weeks,_ the dean frowned at her across his desk. _No more. No less._

_That’s fine._

She hadn’t wanted to go home all that much, anyway.

They all looked the same—babies, that is. Babies all looked the same when they first came into the world, faces compressed and red and puffy and crying. She’d seen enough of them to last a lifetime; at least that was what she had thought as a young adult studying political science in Geneva, ferrying paperwork on days off at the _Palais des Nations._

Her four youngest sisters had been all a-flutter when Theresa got out of the car and headed up the hill to the castle. “He’s got the most adorable cheeks,” Mathilde gushed, clinging to Theresa’s elbow as they made their way through the grand entry and into the private rooms reserved for the royal family. Even her normally-stoic twin Elisabeth was grinning from ear to ear.

“And he’s got light hair, like me and Papi,” Katherine pushed the pitch of her voice high and sing-song, taking hold of her plaits for emphasis. 

“Hair color can change,” Theresa muttered, not in the mood to humor Katherine.

“How do you know _that?_ ” Katherine had demanded.

“Gretel had white hair when she was born, then it turned blonde, now it’s brown.” 

“You’re _silly,_ Tessa, _nobody’s_ born with white hair! You only get white hair when you’re old like Oma, and even then she—”

“Could you go somewhere else maybe?” Theresa burst out, stopping in the opulent anteroom. “I’ll talk to you later. I’m tired, and I need to drop off my things.”

Katherine stared up at her with wide eyes that betrayed just a little bit of fear. Guilt racked Theresa. She hadn’t meant to snap at her sister. “Okay.” Katherine’s voice was small. “I’m sorry.”

“Come on, Katherine.” Elisabeth had clumsily bowed to Theresa, grasped one of Katherine’s grubby hands, and led her away, Mathilde casting a confused look at Theresa before bowing and following them.

“I didn’t mean to snap,” she murmured to her feet and looked up. 

“I know you didn’t.” Céline, the second daughter of the family, had been leaning against the doorway to the Violet Drawing Room, which they reserved for photo ops and formal visits. “I get it.”

“I’ve just been feeling—”

“I know. Theresa…” Céline’s eyes had been incredibly sorrowful as she left her post and approached Theresa, inclining her head before sliding one of her hands into hers and leading her to her private rooms. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

“Oh, Theresa, you haven’t thought about it at all?” Off Theresa’s quiet _No,_ Céline cringed. “Oh, Theresa. There’s no chance for you to rule now.”

“There wasn’t before. Agnatic primogeniture, yeah?” Theresa had settled into one of Céline’s chairs and accepted a steaming cup of tea from Céline. “I told you. Quatsch. If it’d been another girl and Papi and Mami hadn’t tried again...the crown would go to Aloysius.”

Both young women had wrinkled up their noses at that point. Aloysius was a particularly annoying cousin of theirs. In the absence of a male heir from their family line, his mother had been spotted by Mathilde busily measuring the windows for curtains whenever they came to Vaduz castle. 

“Yeah, that’s true,” Céline shrugged, slouching in her chair. “But you never know. They—the people, I mean—they could have protested. Marched in the streets. Signed petitions. It’s a new century. A new _millennium,_ even. Things aren’t the same as they were when Papi ascended. Did you remember what I told you on the call last year? About the new princess in Japan.”

“Princess Toshi. We sent a card to the parents.”

“Yeah, her. They talked about it a lot, remember? You never know, maybe she’ll become the Empress of Japan when her father dies or steps down or something. Maybe they can change the laws.”

“It’s not as easy as that. And enough people have to want it. Otherwise, they’d have done it already.” 

“Laws are just like boring old papers. They can be written over again.”

Theresa chuckled. She liked Céline. In many ways they were alike, and in many others they differed. Either way, she was a breath of fresh air, and Theresa liked that about her. “It really isn’t so easy as that.”

“Well then, what are you gonna do about it?” Céline’s eyes sparkled. A challenge.

“I’m not completely obsolete yet. I have time to do what I want to do.”

“Theresa! What are you _doing?_ Come on, join the party!”

Blinking hard, Theresa managed to shake herself out of the memory. Princess Toshi had met a similar fate, the birth of a male cousin putting the debate to extend the lineage to female family members on hold. Fifteen years had passed, and the red-faced baby with cherubic cheeks and a scrub of light hair had grown into a red-faced teenager with slightly less cherubic and more pimply cheeks and curling sandy hair. 

She looked down at the baby on her hip. Katherine’s firstborn, staring up at her with wide dark eyes. Katherine had married young, much like her mother and her mother before her. 

The wheel continued to turn. 

“I’ll take him,” Céline laughed now, stretching out her arms. “You attend to dear Maxi.”

“I’m not a _dear,_ ” Maxi yelled from across the private room that the Liechtenstein embassy in Bern had let them use for his birthday party.

Céline only laughed again at their younger brother, accepting her nephew from Theresa with a nod. “You only get to do this for a few more years.”

“And I am looking forward to washing my hands of this regency.” Theresa rolled her eyes.

“You could always give it to _me_.” Céline smirked suggestively. 

“Don’t practice flirtations on your _sisters!_ ”

Céline flounced off with the baby. Theresa shook her head and headed across the room to meet Maxi, who was doting on their mother. Mami had come all this way from Vienna to celebrate with them. Whether or not Theresa felt very welcoming toward her was another discussion entirely. 

Theresa already knew Mami was in no way welcoming to Martin, and if their disagreement continued in the way it had, she could foresee the same from herself. 

She sighed. It was one thing to be a difficult girlfriend. That she was completely aware of. She had the tendency to be grating when tired, snappish when bothered, and downright abrasive when slighted. Usually she knew workarounds to avoid these.

But it was another thing to be called a burden, and Theresa had no idea how to deal with _that_. 

It had slipped out in the middle of a disagreement, as Martin scraped together a flight bag from the entrails of his little room in Zurich, as Theresa had tried to invite him to this very party. 

He’d said something about a previous function, something Theresa had never remembered, something about messing up in front of one of her distant relatives. Something about feeling inadequate and judged and unworthy. Which had made sense on one level, but then he’d spat out the clincher. 

Apparently _she_ was the burden. Apparently he could never measure up to the standards _she’d_ set. Apparently, when they walked side by side, _she_ towered over him in so many ways and all the ones that mattered. 

And he couldn’t bear it. 

Martin had the right to express his opinion. He had the right to make his grievances known. 

But to be called a _burden._ That had knocked her off her feet entirely, unlocked something Theresa would rather have had hidden away. A young woman abruptly pushed off the pedestal she’d been groomed to hold. Snapping at her little sister, for cooing over a brother she almost didn’t want. A liability. A regent. A liability. A burden. 

A tap at her elbow. 

Theresa whirled and came face-to-face with her adviser, Franz. “Oh hello.”

“Your Highness.” He never called her that in private, that was for the benefit of the guests. “A word?”

“Yes, sure.” Catching Maxi’s eye, she slid out of the room with her adviser. “What is it, Franz?”

“It’s Martin.” Franz looked grim. 

“Martin? Whatever could you…” A thought occurred to her, but she chased it out of her head with a battleaxe. He was a _safe_ pilot. He had aced Swiss Air’s unpassable exam. He had had _Douglas’_ experience to learn from. There was no way…

“Reports have surfaced.” Franz pulled out his phone and unlocked it—the BBC. “That Swiss Air flight 4176, from Beijing to Zurich, has—”

“Franz—” Her voice caught in her throat. _Not at Maxi’s birthday party. Not here. Not now. Not when I was upset at Martin. He’s on that flight. He’s flying that plane..._

“Your Highness, let me finish. According to Russian authorities, flight 4176 was forced to make an emergency landing due to an engine failure…”

“So...so they’ve landed. It’s okay?” A wild surge of hope threatened to overcome her.

“Well...Russian authorities have continued their statement, saying…that they do not know the present condition of the plane or of the 303 souls on board...287 passengers. 16 crew.”

“How on earth do you not know what happened to a two-hundred-foot long plane if you know its pilots were trying to make an emergency landing?” Theresa asked hotly. She could feel her temper rising and tried to squash it down. What if Martin had been flying? _Had_ he been flying? Had he been on his break, asleep, unaware until—

No, she couldn’t dare think too hard about that. 

“When was this?” she asked Franz, trying to keep her cool. “Just now, or earlier today?” _Russia._ She tried to do a quick calculation in her head, but _God it was impossible…_

 _Am I...am I truly that. To you? Do you really…?_ The words were small in her mouth, her heart pounding, God she couldn’t even form a coherent sentence—

 _I swear you’re not, I don’t know what I was saying there but whatever it was I didn’t mean it!_ His eyes were filled with panic, pleading, and Theresa wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe him so badly but she didn’t know what was the truth anymore. She’d been used enough. She’d been humored enough. Maybe it was about time she grew up, really grew up, and put her foot down. 

_You did._

“It happened earlier this morning. They are only disclosing the statement now.”

“Thank you, Franz.” Theresa tried to compose herself.

“I’ll go to Zurich. Perhaps I can get more information. I’ll leave Zita in charge until then, with your permission.”

“Thank you, Franz.”

“My deepest condolences, Your Highness.”

He bowed and ran for the elevators. 

“We don’t even know…” she trailed off. But hours without a word from Martin…

“We have to go. Theresa, we’ve got to go.”

Anguished, Theresa looked for the source of the voice to see Maxi standing a ways away from her, his face pale. “Maxi…you heard that...oh my God, Maxi…”

Before she could reach out for her brother, before she could stop him, he darted back into the room. Theresa ran after him. 

“Okay. Everyone, listen up,” he called out, and the guests quieted, looking expectantly at him, expecting him to call out some new game or activity or something that was so trivial and insignificant and stupid, hiding away in riches and opulence while Martin…

An image intruded on Theresa’s imagination—Martin, thrown from a seat, facedown in some Russian ditch, snow stained crimson beneath and around him, an irreparable gash torn in his—

_No. Shut up, stop, God, make it stop._

—hand thrown up, head twisted to one side, dried blood matting his hair, tinting it crimson—

_Stop stop stop_

—mouth open in a mockery of sleep, a dribble of blood coming from the corner of his mouth and staining the snow—

_Ave Maria gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui—_

—eyes staring blankly into the distance, face swollen beyond recognition and discolored from the blood pooling toward his face, pulled down by gravity—

_—ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae—_

—shoe flung off and lying far away, twisted headset, ripped shirt—

“This party is over.”

Theresa jerked her head up and shot a look at her brother. “Maxi!”

“You’ve all been really great, but there has been an emergency, and—” Maxi barreled on, ignoring Theresa.

“Ignore him!” Theresa cut across. “There is no emergency. He’s playing a joke. Carry on.”

“As the King of Liechtenstein, I declare that this party is _over—_ ”

“ _Maxi!_ You can’t _do_ that.” Theresa marched over to him.

“Well, I’m the King, and I _can!_ ”

“You wanna play this game? Right _now,_ Maxi? Okay fine! I can too! As the _official_ _regent_ to the King, who is a _child_ ,” she added, glaring at Maxi, “this party is _not_ over, and—”

Their family’s heads swiveled from Maxi to Theresa and back, like a crowd at Wimbledon, most looking confused. Their mother looked _amused_ , and Theresa had never wanted to slap her so badly as she did in that moment. The children present looked a little scared. 

“What are you _doing?_ A friend of Liechtenstein—your _boyfriend_ —has been involved in a _plane crash,_ ” Maxi howled indignantly at Theresa, “and he is in danger of death!”

“Maxi!” Theresa felt her face and ears flame. “Maximilian Alfons Karl _Maria!”_

Their sisters gasped. Theresa found Céline in the back of the group, holding her nephew just a little more tightly. She couldn’t bear to look at her mother’s reaction.

Theresa jabbed a shaking finger at the doorway. “A _word,_ Your Majesty!”

Once in the hall, she slammed the door shut and leaned against it, shaking all over. “Maxi. What in _God’s name_ are you _playing_ at?”

“Don’t you love him? I’m _trying_ to help you!” Maxi was turning redder and redder by the second.

“Of...of course I do, Maxi, but _in front of everybody!_ You can’t just _do_ that! That’s not how you host parties, that’s not—”

“Of course it’s not. I’m not _stupid,_ it’s just—!” Despite his determination to argue, his voice cracked, and Theresa resisted the inexplicable urge to laugh. He was a _child._ She could hold her own against him if she had to.

She wasn’t prepared for what he said next.

“I don’t _care_ about hosting parties right now,” Maxi lowered his tone to conceal the quiver in his voice, but Theresa could still detect it. “What if...what if Martin…” He could barely form the words. Theresa gaped at him in shock. “I...I don’t want...he could be dead and you…”

“And...I?”

“You’d...no. No.”

“What is it?” Theresa schooled her tone lower, leaned down, grasped her brother’s shoulders. “Maxi, what?”

In front of her, Maxi’s eyes welled up and over. 

“Maxi. Oh, _Maxi,_ no.” Theresa reached for his face, but he turned away from her and wiped furiously at his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“I don’t want him to die,” Maxi muttered into the heels of his palms. “I don’t want Martin to die.”

“Neither do I, Maxi, nobody does.”

“I just...I imagined, all of a sudden, you with his casket, in St. Florin and there were so many flowers, flowers everywhere...and you were crying and wearing all black with that mourning veil you wore for our great-aunt…” This time when Theresa reached for him, he let her mop off his face with the edge of her sleeve like he was a little boy again. “I wish I didn’t, it was horrid…”

“Maxi…”

“I don’t want him to die. I don’t. I don’t.”

“I know. I don’t either, Maxi, but really…” She folded her little brother into a hug, rested her cheek on the top of his head. “Maxi, there’s nothing we can do. From here we can’t do anything.”

“That’s why I wanted to cancel the party and go to Zurich.”

“Maxi, we still wouldn’t be able to do anything from there.”

He stood in silence until he muttered something Theresa didn’t quite catch. “What?” she asked, smoothing back some of his hair. 

“I want the Russian president’s head cut off,” he muttered into her dress.

Despite everything, Theresa had to stifle a laugh. “You do realize that this time, that really does have political implications.”

“I don’t care. If it would get Martin back.”

Theresa looked down, still a little floored. She hadn’t been aware her brother cared for Martin that much. “You...like him?”

“I think he’s...he wa...I think he’s cool. And...and funny. And when he looks at you, he’s so soppy it’s almost gross. He looks like a cat, like he’s watching your every move but not in a creepy way, I mean he looks so invested in you all the time and I don’t know how that’s possible. And he always helps me with Microsoft Flight Simulator even though he’s embarrassed that his room is small. And he knows everything about planes. He...he _can’t_ be dead.” Maxi clammed up.

Theresa blinked away an itch in her eye and held her little brother a little tighter, not knowing what to say to that. “You owe your guests an explanation,” she managed. “If you don’t want to go on with the party, I get it. But you owe your guests a calm and collected explanation and apology whatever you choose. We won’t go to Zurich until later. Okay? Is that a deal?”

Maxi nodded into her shoulder. 

“Okay. Good. You go take care of your guests. I will be in the washroom.”

The edge of the counter was cold against her hands. Marble. Italian marble. Where did it come from? She repeated it over and over in her head to keep the image of a dead Martin from surfacing in her mind. _Carrara, Carrara, Carrara, Carrara._

Cold table. Morgue table.

No. _Carrara, Carrara, Carrara._

She leaned forward, pressed her forehead to the glass mirror, let the cold seep through her skin.

Leaning on a corpse.

_Carrara. Carrara. Carrara._

Alone in the washroom, far from the snowy plain, Theresa gave herself over and cried.


	3. the wind is a-pounding on my back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the airport as a liminal space has never been more apparent to theresa than now.

“Can’t we mobilize the armed forces?”

Theresa looked away and to her side, having been staring blankly at the concrete wall of the tunnel outside the windows of the private car. Maxi was slouched in the seat on the opposite end of the car, picking at the skin around one of his nails. “Maxi. I keep telling you. We don’t _have_ an army. We can’t afford it. We just use Switzerland’s.”

“Can’t we _ask_ them if we could use it?”

“For what? Don't tell me you’re planning on declaring war.” The dryness fell flat in her mouth. It was meant to be a joke, but it didn’t sound like one.

“You know,” Maxi looked over at her. In the beam of lights placed at regular intervals in the tunnel’s walls, pain was written in every curve of his puerile face, and Theresa wished that she could scrub it off, erase it. He didn’t need to feel this pain. He didn’t have to. “For the search efforts. So they can find…” He couldn’t finish. 

“Russia has probably already sent theirs.” It was a wild guess, and Theresa knew it.

“But Franz said...they didn’t know…Theresa.”

“Mm?” She was back to staring blankly at the wall of the tunnel as they fought their way through afternoon traffic on the A51 to Zurich airport.

“I don’t get it at all. How do they not know what happened to the plane?”

“I’m thinking the same thing. If they were talking to them the whole time until they made the landing, how do they not know whether they’re okay or…” The floor was opening beneath her, sucking her out of the car, sending her hurtling down, down, down... 

“Or…”

“Yeah…” Theresa looked at her brother.

“Oh no.” Maxi’s bottom lip wobbled momentarily before he looked out of his own window to hide it from her.

She let her head fall into her hand, pinched the bridge of her nose. “Look, Maxi...”

“But why won’t Russia say...”

“Maxi.”

“Is it because of their image? They don’t want...but it’s not _their_ plane, it’s not _their_ pilots.”

“ _Maximilian._ ” Theresa’s tone took on a warning edge, and thankfully her brother stopped trying to speculate. “Thank you. That will _do.”_

“I’m...I’m sorry.”

“You’re trying to make reasons out of it. I get it. But right now…” Theresa sighed again. “Right now, Maxi, I just can’t take it. I’m not _there_ yet. I don’t know when I’ll be, if I’ll be—for now...let’s just…” But the sentence trailed off of the tip of her tongue. What were they going to do? Hope? Pray? 

Who were they going to pray to? The plane had been slapped out of the sky without mercy. Who would intercede for them? What cosmic power would take pity on people damned by the heavens themselves?

Finally, their car pulled up in front of Zurich's international arrivals terminal, and Theresa slipped out of the car with a grateful nod to their driver. “Coming?” she asked Maxi, who was still slouching in his seat.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, unbuckling his seatbelt and joining her on the pavement.

As they fought their way through the crowd, Theresa tried to grasp Maxi’s hand, but he whipped his hand out of her loose grip and crossed his arms, scowling.

Theresa shrugged to herself. Spotting Franz standing at an inconspicuous gap in the crowds waiting at the rail separating them from th arriving passengers, she changed direction and headed over. If Maxi lost her in the crowd, that was on him.

“Hello, Franz,” she called out once she’d come within earshot.

“Your Majesty. Your Highness!” Franz turned, shoving his phone into his pocket and inclining his head. “What are you…”

“Might wait. Sit and wait. Maybe they’ll give us some more information. You should rest, Franz. Get some food, something to drink…” Theresa waved a hand vaguely toward the airy building. “I know it’s expensive. I’ll pay. You didn’t have to wait this long.”

Franz opened his mouth to object, but Theresa shook her head quickly. “I insist. Maxi, why don’t you go with him?” she turned to her brother, who was still scowling. “It might keep you both occupied. I can wait. Heaven knows I’m good at that.”

Having seen them off to a Nordsee satellite stall in the arrivals pavilion, Theresa found a place at the rail overlooking the passengers entering the terminal and chanced a look at her watch. Martin’s plane should have been landing at this time. He would have been commencing shutdown checks, making jokes with his colleagues, maybe showing a kid around the flightdeck now that he had less to worry about—now that he was back at his home base. Maybe they would have debriefed the flight. Gone through customs by now, if they’d been blessed by the winds that day and made a quicker flight of it. 

“May we have your attention please,” a voice called out, quieting the murmurs of those assembled and waiting for arriving passengers. Theresa took her gaze off her watch and looked up to find its source. A woman with a red-striped neckerchief had stepped out to address the group. Theresa recognized the Swiss Air colors, and her heart seized up in her chest like some great big fish flopping around on a boat’s deck and choking to death (could fish choke?)

Martin’s clip-on tie, it had the exact same pattern. How many times had she handed it to him, laughing, as he tripped around his room frantically searching for it...He couldn’t tie one, he never could, and if she giggled about it he would use his go-to explanation that pilots needed clip-on ties around moving parts to prevent accidents.

_Yes, but at a gala concert, Martin? At an orchestral concert, do you really need a clip-on tie to prevent an accident? Do you expect to be sucked into a tuba during the show?_

This must be a spokeswoman, or a ground agent, or a representative of some sort. “We ask that all those waiting for information on Flight 4176, service from Beijing to Zurich, please report to the designated crisis center on the east end of the concourse. Thank you.”

As Theresa and a few others present at the arrivals waiting area disengaged themselves from the rail and followed the representative away, a murmur rose from the others waiting. It was almost a murmur of pity, and Theresa realized for the first time that by now, people knew of what had happened. By now, people knew that flight 4176 was not going to land in Zurich anytime soon.

None of the travelers walking through the concourse dared to make eye contact with the small group of people who were waiting for passengers and crew that might never again walk through this terminal. 

Swiss Air staff was cordoning off a set of generic leather-and-metal airport waiting room chairs with lurid yellow tape that had a sheet of paper taped to it. Someone had scribbled _FLIGHT 4176_ on the paper with a black marker. 

Theresa wasn’t the only one in the waiting area. Already, some small groups of people were standing around, speaking in hushed tones. Others sat alone, scrolling through phones, a mixture of anxiety and boredom. 

“Pardon me. Have I missed anything?” Theresa asked one of the ground agents, who was sitting at a fold-up table reading through a voluminous binder. “I mean, any new information?”

“No,” he replied, momentarily looking up from his binder to address her. “We’ve been told they’ll—I mean, the Russian Ministry of Transport—should be releasing an updated statement at any moment. For now, please take a seat and try to relax—I think there will be free coffee and light snacks brought down from the lounge.”

“Dankä.”

Theresa chose a seat near the taped-off boundary and leaned gingerly against the unforgiving leather. Mirroring many of the surrounding people, she took out her phone and unlocked it, but hovered indecisively over the screen.

On a whim, she opened her messaging app. Scrolling past the alarmed messages from her sisters, she searched for the contact photo she wanted most to see.

 _Martin Crieff._ The last text was a simple _I love you,_ probably sent before he had dutifully turned off his phone and stowed it away for departure.

She hadn’t replied to it, having been sulkily taping up streamers in a spare room of the embassy for Maxi’s birthday party and trying not to think of Martin. Of what he had said. Of how boring the party would be without Martin.

Maybe he was right. Maybe she _was_ the burden, the way she looked at Martin. He didn’t exist for entertainment value, and he thought she looked at him like he was. Maybe that kind of thought—that the party would be boring without Martin there—had reflected an unconscious belittling of him. Maybe that’s what he had seen in her, that her expectations for a partner were so high that if said partner didn’t meet them, the partner would just be seen as a funny thing kept around for the laughs. Comic relief. The token commoner. Someone to tease, and to put down, and to have fun with. The court jester.

Not many people had told her they loved her before, not before Martin. She spoke High German, yes, and High German had an _I love you—Ich liebe dich,_ but she spent much of her time in Switzerland, and they said _I like you—Ich han dich gern,_ and that had been enough. Of course, more people said _I love you_ now, but—

Texting had no tone. Was it _I love you, I’m sorry?_ Or _I love you, like I always message before a flight?_ Or was it something else?

She tapped the text entry box.

_Please be oka_

Backspace backspace backspace. That didn’t seem right.

_Stay sa_

Backspace backspace backspace. He could be running from a bear or something. Did they even have bears wherever in Russia they had landed?

_I’m sorry for_

She paused, fingers hovering over the keyboard. For...ignoring him? For giving him the cold shoulder? For leaving them on bad terms? For taking him for granted?

Backspace backspace backspace.

She looked up from her phone, at the passing people. She didn’t know why—maybe she needed inspiration? 

Normally she would be seeing family members reuniting with open arms, big smiles, maybe someone was recording the reunion on a phone. Laughter, maybe sometimes tears. Hand-drawn signs, hugs, kisses. Today was different: nobody dared to joyfully welcome their loved ones, only bundled them away quickly, the arriving travelers confused until they heard the hushed explanation, saw the yellow tape sectioning off the group of harried people consulting phones and ground agents and sipping free coffee from the lounge. Then pity. Then looking away.

Them looking away was the worst part.

_When you get a chance, call. I love you._

Theresa gathered herself up and hit the send button.

The familiar progress bar popped up at the top of the screen, resolutely marching along until it hit an invisible wall and stayed there.

Theresa aggressively locked her phone and put it facedown on her lap.

“Is anyone sitting here?”

Theresa looked up to see a man with a steaming cup of coffee. He was pointing at the empty seat one place away from her. From the sound of his accent, he wasn’t Swiss. “No,” she shook her head.

“Okay. Dankä.” He sat with a gusty sigh and began to drink his coffee. “Waiting for the statement too?” he asked her, by way of making small talk.

“Yeah.” She looked away. She wasn’t sure if she could bear small talk right now.

“You from here?”

“Sure, you could say that.” Theresa smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “And you?” she deflected the question back to him, assuming that he wanted to talk more about himself.

“Moved here a few years back.”

“Hm. That’s nice. For work?”

“Yeah, you could say that. Medical tech.”

“Ah.”

“I’m waiting on a colleague from Beijing. He was supposed to give a few remarks at a convention.” Her seatmate laughed humorlessly. “Guess that’s not happening now.”

Theresa felt sour, then reminded herself that he, like everyone in this group, needed to cope somehow. “Yeah.”

“You’re waiting on…”

“My.” She couldn’t say it out loud, not to a member of the public. Maybe there weren’t gossip columnists here, but—

“Your?”

“Friend.”

“Oh.” He paused. “What does—did—do—”

“Pilot.” Theresa glowered at the floor. Maybe it would shock him enough into giving her some peace.

Sure enough, he fell into a brief moment of silence. “Gosh. I’m—”

Theresa’s phone vibrated in her lap, and in a flash she had flipped it over and gazed intently at the screen.

_Message Send Failure_

She cleared the notification and sucked her lips in, trying to suppress a groan of frustration.

“Your attention, please.” Theresa looked up to see a ground agent scrolling through a tablet. “We have word from the Russian Depa...Ministry for transport.”

Silence fell on those assembled as the ground agent climbed onto a chair to better address the group. “Statement reads. ‘At 0558 UTC air traffic controllers received the first emergency calls from Swiss Air flight 4176 from Beijing to Zurich, ICAO type designator B772 with aircraft registration HB-AKW. The communication concerned an engine failure and procedures for an emergency landing. According to the Rosaviatsia’—that’s the Federal Air Transport Agency—‘local air traffic control discussed the situation with the two pilots flying and, based on the information given, directed them to an unused airbase located approximately 60 km from the town of —. ATC was linked in communication with HB-AKW until the captain made their first and only known attempt to land at the airbase.’”

Some of those assembled began to whisper among themselves at the wording. _Known…_

“‘According to the Rosaviatsia, air traffic control lost communication with HB-AKW after its captain attempted a landing at the site. Several search, rescue, and recovery crews and investigation teams have been assembled in conjunction with the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations and are prepared to deploy, however—’”

A murmur of indignance began to rise among those listening.

“‘However,’” the agent continued, raising his tone a little. “‘a major winter storm has been forecast for the area, and it is possible that passage of personnel and equipment to the airbase—over land or by air—will not be safe for at least several days.’”

_Several days._

Theresa’s vision blurred. She’d heard enough.

Shoving her phone into her bag, she stood up, feeling a prickling sensation rise up beneath her tongue. 

“They’re not—” her seatmate said, looking at her.

“I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.” Theresa felt her face flame again and turned her back. Ducking under the yellow tape, she began walking away from the crisis communications center, pressing her tongue to the roof of her mouth to stop herself from crying.

Some cosmic miracle somehow prevented her from walking into people as she crossed her arms tightly and marched through the crowd, heading God knew where but anywhere other than here because _several days_ meant a lot of things and she couldn’t _wait_ for several days, she had to know—

“Theresa? Theresa!”

“Leave me _alone,_ ” she hissed, walking fast.

“Theresa.”

A hand at her elbow. “Let _go!”_

“Theresa,” Franz said gently, sternly, and steered her out of the concourse and into the rapidly darkening dusk. Maxi clung to Theresa’s other arm, and she had the grace not to try and shake him off too. 

They came to a stop in a relatively quiet corner, next to a set of bollards sectioning off a mercifully empty smoking area. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell us. We heard.” Franz’s voice was calm. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine! I’m _fine_.”

“You’re not,” Maxi objected.

“Maximili—”

“We should go. We can assign other members of the household staff to gather information. It is not your obligation to do so, Theresa.” Franz’s tone made it clear he would not take _no_ for an answer.

“I’ve called the car,” Maxi held up Theresa’s phone, which he’d probably plucked out of her bag. “We’ll go back to the flat—”

“No. Not there.” Theresa shook her head. “Not yet. I need to go somewhere first.”

* * *

In the dim hall, Theresa fished through her bag for a minute before giving up. “Maxi,” she turned to her brother and handed him her phone. “Can you get me some light?”

Without a word, her brother accepted the device and turned on the phone’s built-in flashlight, aiming it into the bag. Finally, Theresa pulled out a _Remove Before Flight_ keychain and took hold of the key attached to it.

“Theresa. Are you sure—”

“He _wouldn’t_ —won’t—mind, Franz. I need to...I need to get something.”

Franz nodded, though he still looked a little skeptical as to why Theresa had found the need to break into Martin’s small flat. “Then I will stand guard in the hall.”

“Yes. Thank you, Franz.” Turning to Maxi, Theresa accepted her phone from him and pushed some of her brother’s hair back from his forehead. “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to. You could stay with Franz.”

“No, I’m coming.” Maxi jerked his head out of her reach. “My hair’s _fine._ ”

“Well, all right then. Suit yourself.”

Theresa fit the key into the lock, turned it, and opened the door. The hinges didn’t squeak as they normally did. Martin had taken a can of WD-40 to them a few nights prior and promptly spilled some on the floor, not realizing he’d done so until waking up Theresa the next morning with a grunt and a thud as he slipped and fell while trying to prepare tea.

Shaking her head, Theresa entered the room, took off her shoes, and turned on the lights. 

She paused. There was his little kitchen, a door to his bathroom. His television, his computer monitor. A chest of drawers. A picture of a fighter jet on the wall over a small nook table. In a far corner, his bed, neatly made. Three pictures in frames on the wall over his bed: him and his mother, old MJN promotional picture, him and Theresa.

She stared at the last picture. They were laughing, looking at each other. Eyes half shut. Douglas had taken the picture during a get-together for Theresa’s birthday. It had been the best birthday celebration she’d had in her life, far surpassing that godawful début at the _Opernball_ , the one where she’d appeared on national television on a sweating bachelor’s arm and with the most pained smile on her face, all to the tune of the _Fächerpolonaise_. 

“Theresa. What do you need to get?” Maxi’s voice, impatient, broke into her thoughts.

“Right.” Theresa crept into the area serving as Martin’s bedroom. She was only here for a spare pair of trousers and an extra shirt. Nothing more.

Suddenly, her phone beeped. A message.

Dropping her clothes on Martin’s bed, Theresa grabbed her phone and turned it on.

“What is it?” Maxi hurried over to her. From the door, Franz poked his head inside.

“It’s…” Theresa unlocked her phone. “Not Martin.” Her stomach fell slightly. “From...Herc. It’s from...it’s from Herc.”

 _Hey Theresa, just saw this._ He’d attached a link to the updating BBC story about the crash. 

_What’s going on here? My message won’t send to Martin, he’s probably tired of talking to me. LOL._

_I hope I used that right._

_But can you pass this on to him when you’re able? Does he know anything about this? Were any colleagues of his involved?_

A chill of realization surged through Theresa’s body, and she fell sideways onto the bed. Something unexpected bubbled up from her chest.

Laughter. Mirthless, humorless, shrieking laughter.

“Theresa?” Maxi was at her side in an instant. “Theresa.”

She turned her face to the bedspread to stifle it, but it wouldn’t stop. Laughter burst from her chest, manic and jarring and ugly and startling and out of place.

“Theresa!” Maxi sounded frightened, and Theresa felt him grab at her shoulders. “Talk to me, oh my God, you’re scaring me _don’t do this Tessa, please you’re scaring me!_ What did he say? What did he say to you? Does he know? He _doesn’t_ know? What? _What?_ Just _tell_ me!”

“Your Majesty—” Franz shut the door and approached them quickly.

Theresa felt Maxi let go of her and yank her phone out of her hand, but she didn’t even lift a finger to try and get it back. 

Instead, she reached for one of Martin’s pillows and buried her head in it.

Hopefully none of his neighbors would hear the scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took me a lot longer than i expected. and yeah the zurich arrivals terminal probably doesn't look at all like the version in my head but what can i do about that at this point. anyway, we're halfway through! happy new year!


	4. tell me, is it worth it?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> finding it impossible to stay in Zurich, Theresa flees to the only people she knows they’ll be truly cared for—her family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a longer one this time.  
> TW for a death mention.

Before the car had even stopped, Theresa had unbuckled her seatbelt and had a hand on the door handle, ready to leap out.

“You will be quick, and you will be inconspicuous,” Franz warned. “They have not yet released the pilots’ names, but they’ll probably be doing it at any moment. When they do, there will be instant public scrutiny on their private lives.”

“Yes, yes, I am aware.” Theresa jammed a pair of sunglasses onto her face and one of Gretel’s bucket hats on her head. “I won’t be long.”

“Why do you have to go back in, anyway?” Maxi demanded, looking up from his phone. “I thought you got your clothes? Eventually?”

“Martin went to the market just a few days ago. He has produce in storage.” Theresa looked outside her car window and eyed Martin’s apartment building suspiciously. “If they’re not going to be able to contact them for several days, we’ll have to be in this for the long run. And I don’t want him coming back to a flat full of food that’s gone bad.” 

_Assuming he comes back at all._ That part was left unsaid.

“Fine.” Maxi’s tone was dubious, but he didn’t say anything more.

“You have your earbuds, Theresa?” Franz asked.

“Right here.” Theresa waggled one at him and pushed it into her ear. Following Maxi’s advice, she had threaded the set down the front of her sweatshirt for security and hidden her phone in its front pocket.

“Okay.” Franz took one last glance outside. “You’re clear. Go.”

Theresa leaped out of the car and let herself into the building, taking the back stairs up to Martin’s floor to avoid meeting anyone in the lift.

She encountered none of Martin’s neighbors as she unlocked his door and entered his room as she’d done the night prior. As she closed the door behind her and turned to Martin’s kitchen, her phone rang. The sound of a ringtone playing directly into her left ear made her jump; after a split second she registered the ringtone as Carolyn’s and answered the call. “Yes? Theresa here.”

“Hello, Theresa.” Carolyn’s voice sounded strained. “Ah...I do hope this isn’t a bad time for you? I mean, to take a call?”

“No, it isn’t. Actually, I like this,” Theresa rambled, opening a cabinet and rummaging around. She took out a pair of bananas that had gone past their bread-by time and dropped them into her trashbag. “It was much too quiet in here and I don’t think I could go on doing this like a spy.”

“What! Why, where are you?”

“Martin’s flat,” she explained. “I can’t let his food go bad.”

“I see. Well, erm, Theresa. How...how are you doing?”

Theresa opened the refrigerator, hunted around, and pulled out a half-finished shelled carton of blueberries. “I’m just. Doing what I have to do.” She chuckled humorlessly. “I can’t let myself sit still for one minute or I’ll think about. Well. How he must be. Or how he must have...” With a fingernail, she teased open the carton. Spotting several berries sporting hats made of mold, she wrinkled her nose and tossed the whole thing into the trashbag. It fell on top of the bananas with a dull thump.

“You’ve slept, at least?”

“Tried. Had a nightmare. Not doing that again.” She sighed. “How about you, Carolyn?” she asked, trying to lighten her terse tone. “How are you holding up? And Herc?”

“Herc absolutely couldn’t believe it at first, when you texted us last night. Neither could I, if I’m being honest…Anyway. I’ve...I’ve never had. I mean, I’ve never _known_ anyone who’s been involved in...this sort of thing. As first times go, if I’m being honest, this is probably the worst.”

“I can imagine,” Theresa murmured, gingerly picking up some tomatoes from the back of the refrigerator. “And...Douglas, and Arthur?”

“Arthur’s in a little shock right now, but at least he’s _aware._ I’m not totally sure it’s completely sunk in with Douglas.”

“Really.”

“I’m debating sending him home. He keeps puttering around the office. Picking things up and putting them back down again, I can’t imagine why _that_ would be his coping mechanism of choice, but...between you and I, Theresa,” Carolyn dropped her tone, “I’d rather keep everyone here in one spot. I just can’t imagine if I let someone else go out of my sight and…” She left the thought unsaid.

Having gone through Martin’s food supply and tossed the produce that had gone bad or were close to going bad into a wayward trashbag, Theresa decided to look out of the window and see if she could catch the car on the way down to the communal bins.

“Actually, Theresa, erm…” Carolyn hesitated. “I’m sorry to bring up business at...at _this_ time above all times, but what I meant to call you about initially is the flight you had scheduled? For tomorrow, for Maxi.”

Theresa froze in the middle of the room, on the way to the window. “Oh. That’s right. Um, er, well. The thing with Maxi, is—is that I asked him, last night, if he wanted to go back to school like we’d planned, and he said...he said no. He doesn’t want to go back to school yet. We’ll push back the flight until this all blows over.”

“That’s fine. Just know we can _always_ arrange something if you need us to be with you. But really, he's refusing to go back to school?”

“Yes.” Theresa recovered herself and stepped over to the window, trashbag in tow. “I know, I was surprised too...he’s actually taken this a lot harder than I expected. I didn’t even know...I didn’t know he cared about Martin that much, I—I mean it’s not like Maxi’s been a boy of many words with regard to his feelings—he’s a lot like his father in _that_ respect, but yes. He doesn’t want to go back.”

“And the school—they’ve _agreed_ to that?”

“Well, yes, the administration have given him leave conditional that he completes remedial work. He agreed with that.” A thought occurred to her as she twitched back the curtains and looked down. “Unless he’s using this as an excuse to get off school, but judging from yesterday I doubt—”

The words choked to a stop in her throat as she spotted a clutch of photojournalists huddling on the pavement beneath the window and attempting to make conversation with a woman she recognized as one of Martin’s neighbors.

_Well. Someone must have leaked the names of the pilots to the public._

“Theresa?” Carolyn asked her over the line, but Theresa somehow had difficulty forming her thoughts into coherent words.

The neighbor looked up at Theresa, frozen in the window, and her eyes widened in recognition.

The first camera went up, and Theresa yelped, diving out of the way of the window and nearly tearing the rod off the wall in her haste to close the curtains.

“Theresa, are you okay?”

A different ringtone played into Theresa’s ears—Franz.

“Carolyn, if it’s fine with you, I’m putting you on hold.” Not waiting for a reply, she pulled out her phone and switched over to Franz’s call.

“Theresa.” Displeasure oozed from his tone. “They know.”

“Yes! Yes, I know…” Theresa groaned, massaging her hip where she’d fallen on Martin’s floor before pinching the bridge of her nose. “It was stupid of me to open the curtains and look out the window...”

“You _opened the curtains and looked out the window._ ”

“I wanted to see if I could catch you on the way down...well, what did _you_ think alerted them?”

“That mousy little woman in workout gear currently sprinting from the scene.”

“Oh, Martin’s neighbor? I highly doubt _she_ would have willingly told them which apartment was Martin’s. She was always so nice to me whenever I came around.”

“Yes, well, Your Highness, niceness only goes so far. I thought you’d have known that by now.”

“Yes...well.”

“Are you _finished,_ at least?”

“Yes.” Theresa got up from the floor and pulled on the edge of Martin’s bedspread to straighten it out, trying to think up a plan. “I...okay, Franz, take the car around to the west side of the building, that’s where the bins are. I’ll put the trash in there, then jump straight into the car.”

“You’ll have to make it fast.”

“I can do fast.” Theresa tugged on her sweatshirt self-consciously. She disliked athleisure as a personal rule, but it had done wonders in keeping her incognito in the past and she wasn’t one to argue with that.

“Then do it.” Franz hung up, and Theresa was left on Carolyn’s call.

“Sorry, Carolyn,” Theresa muttered, tying the trashbag shut. 

“Good Lord, Theresa. You scared me there. What happened?”

“So apparently they released the names of the pilots to the media. A couple Internet searches and record perusals later, there’s an assortment of photographers trying to catch a glimpse of a significant other under my— under Martin’s window...and I have to get out before they try to _talk_ to me.”

“Oh dear. Shall we continue talking later?”

“No, it’s okay,” Theresa said a little quickly, then held herself back. It wouldn’t do to let herself sound _desperate_ , for heaven’s sake. 

Then she shrugged. They were _all_ desperate right now. “I just...I just don’t want to…I just don’t want to be alone.”

“Okay then. I won’t leave anytime soon, don’t worry. What are you going to do?”

“Well. I’m going to sneak out of the building, intercept the car, and bin Martin’s spoiled food in the process. It should work. If it does I’ll submit it to whoever writes action movies. It’s a good idea.”

Carolyn chuckled over the line, but it was a nervous sort of laugh, like she didn’t know if she was allowed to find it funny or not.

“Okay. Right.” Theresa took one last look around the room as she stuck a sticker onto the trashbag. Who knew if Martin was going to see this place again? “Okay. Okay, Carolyn. Here goes nothing.”

She took a deep breath, gathered up her trashbag and the last of her strength, and left the room.

Her steps echoed around the stairwell as she raced down the stairs. Theresa knew Carolyn could hear her heavy breathing as she came to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the stairs and checked down the hall for people.

“Theresa,” Carolyn whispered over the line. “Keep going. Don’t stop.”

“I’m checking for people.” Theresa peered down the corridor one more time. “Okay. I’m going.”

“That’s my girl.”

Theresa started out walking down the hall, but lost her mettle halfway and broke into a run. Slamming through the door to the bins, Theresa prepared herself to heave her load into the bin.

“There!”

She whirled in the middle of hoisting the trashbag into the designated bin. A man with a cigarette dangling from his fingers was pointing at her.

Theresa hissed a word that was extremely offensive in Bavaria and turned away from him. Thankfully, the car was screeching to a halt a few meters away, and she pulled her hood over her head and made a dash for it.

“In in _in!”_ Franz was calling as he threw the door open, and Theresa dived into the car.

“Maxi, get _down!”_ she tackled her brother, who gave a long-suffering sigh and bent into a sort of brace position as Theresa piled herself on top of him to keep him out of view of the cameras.

“Lose them,” Franz ordered their driver, who nodded a little boredly and careened into the midmorning Zurich traffic. 

It wasn’t until they’d gotten far from the building that Theresa realized she was still on the phone with Carolyn. 

“Carolyn,” she ventured, pressing a finger to her earbud. “Are you still there?”

“Yes.” If the other woman was shaken at all, it didn’t sound like it. 

“Carolyn, do you happen to be...on standby?”

“Yes, why?”

“I think,” Theresa began slowly. She looked at Maxi, who was grumbling to himself as he straightened his sweater out. “We might take you up on your offer.”

* * *

_Martin Crieff, first officer. Pierre Guerin, senior first officer. Leonie Moreau, training captain. Hans Vogel, captain._

Theresa morosely reread the names of the pilots flying Flight 4176 as she shamelessly mooched electricity from a wall outlet in an inconspicuous corner of Zurich Airport’s departures terminal. The chill of the unforgiving tile seeped into her. 

Martin had been flying with them. Martin had gone down with them. Maybe Martin had even died with them. Who even knew at this point? The storm over the abandoned base was still raging, and Swiss Air had issued no following statements from the day prior.

As Theresa read through the names again, a call popped up from Carolyn.

“Hello?” Theresa unplugged her phone from the wall and held the phone to her ear. 

“Hi Theresa.” She recognized Arthur’s voice echoing down the line. “Mum locked up the plane and we’re walking down now. She wants me to tell you we’ve landed.” 

“Okay,” she managed by way of reply. “Thank you, Arthur. We’ll be waiting for you in the departures terminal. Like we always do.”

“All right. See you in a bit.” Arthur hung up without his usual effusive greetings, or queries to how she was or how Martin was doing or how her sisters were, or occasional obscure yet interesting fact he’d encountered during they time they’d spent in the air.

“Maxi,” she turned to her other side and prodded her brother, who was napping in an alcove with his and Theresa’s backpacks as pillows. She lifted the hood of his sweatshirt slightly. He’d jammed it down over his eyes when he’d fallen asleep an hour before. “Maxi, wake up. They’ve landed and will be coming to walk us through security any minute now.”

Maxi sat up, rubbing his eyes, and gradually stood to stretch. “Cool. I’m going to the washroom.”

Franz was pretending to peruse a newspaper while sitting primly on one of the generic leather-and-chrome airport benches that peppered the concourse. He twitched his paper down and looked at Theresa. “I’ll go guard the place.”

“Yes.” Theresa stretched her legs and shoved her phone into her backpack. “Please do.”

She waited a second for them to leave before she rose, yawned, bent to touch her toes, and stepped over to Franz’s vacated chair. Pulling her phone back out, she sat again.

Arthur had been more subdued than usual, and Theresa cringed at the remembrance. Once more, she doubted whether this was the right thing to do. To impose herself and Maxi on OJS during this difficult time, to score a free pass out of Zurich to escape reporters and scrutiny she could just as well avoid while locked up in the apartments paid for by the royal family...certainly this smelled a whole lot of selfishness. Who was she, really, to make them do this for her when they were also going through the same paralysis of grief and terror and hope?

And who wouldn’t say that they didn’t have it worse, that they weren’t taking this any better than she and Maxi were? They had known Martin for far longer, had worked with him for years. They knew Martin better than she did, so surely _they_ were having a worse time of it? 

Then Theresa shook her head. It wasn’t a _competition._ Nobody was competing for the _Most-Shaken-Shocked-and-Traumatized_ award. They were all suffering, albeit in different ways, and maybe it was better for them if they were in it together than apart. 

“Theresa!”

Arthur was running toward her across the concourse, the rest of the airline not far behind. 

She shoved her phone in a pocket again and stood up, only to be tackled back onto her seat and into a hug. “Theresa, just wanted to say first off: I like your hat. But also, I’m so sorry…”

“Arthur,” she greeted her friend, wrapping her arms around him. “Oh, _Arthur…”_

“Hello, Theresa.” And there was Carolyn, reaching past Arthur’s head to gently push some hair back from Theresa’s face, a sad smile in her tone. Theresa looked up at her to return the greeting and saw Douglas and Herc talking with Maxi and Franz, who’d ostensibly returned from the washroom. 

She hid her face in Arthur’s coat to conceal the sudden wave of tears that threatened to overrun her eyelashes.

“Are we leaving now?” she heard Maxi ask. “Theresa?”

Arthur let go of her, and she swiped at her eyes with the edges of her sleeves, not caring if anyone saw that she’d been crying. They’d have time to talk and catch up later. “Yes, Maxi,” she told him, standing up. “Franz, a word before we go?”

Her adviser nodded, standing to one side with her. Carolyn joined them, and Franz looked a little dubious. Theresa shook her head and he was immediately at ease. “So, the plan,” she murmured. 

“Yes. The household will continue to monitor statements from the crisis center and provide updates as they arrive. All administrative procedures under your jurisdiction are to be placed on hold for the time being, and if you need to be contacted…”

“My regular phone should suffice.”

“Okay. There’s just one more thing…”

“Oh?” Theresa raised an eyebrow.

Franz took out his own phone and unlocked it. “I've just received word from the Archbishop.”

“Ours?” Off his nod to the affirmative, Theresa asked further, “What does he say?”

“He says they are organizing a novena for the passengers and crew of the flight, and especially, as it were, for Martin. It seems that what Maxi... _said..._ made quite the impression on His Grace when he found out the news from Her Majesty yesterday.”

“From...you can’t be saying _Mami_ told...unless…?” Theresa gaped at him. 

“It was one epithet in particular which she’d told him Maxi used to describe Martin. _Friend of Liechtenstein._ ”

Theresa, still gaping, looked over to her brother, who was tolerating a hug from Arthur. “Oh...Franz, I don’t know what to say…”

“It is a great honor, certainly, and it seems the parishioners have taken to it with enthusiasm. His Grace informs me that the volunteer list to stand vigil has exceeded the page he initially printed out.”

“Wow.” For once, she was at a loss for words. “I just…”

“That was just to let you know that you’re not alone. None of you are.” Franz nodded encouragingly. “Now, that’s all I had to tell you. I’ll send you more updates when I get them. Stay safe.”

“I couldn’t thank you enough, Franz,” Theresa started, but her adviser held up a hand to stop her. 

“It’s my job,” he reminded her quietly. “Again. Stay safe.”

He turned and left, leaving Theresa and Carolyn to gape at each other.

In no time, Theresa found herself sitting in a window seat on the port side of G-ERTI as they made their ascent from Zurich. Arthur and Maxi were playing something they’d pulled out of the games cupboard in an adjacent row, and Carolyn had buckled herself into the seat next to Theresa’s.

Suddenly, a chime rang out overhead, and Theresa startled in her seat.

“Good afternoon,” Herc’s voice issued from the address system. “Welcome on board this flight from Zurich to Fitton. Our estimated time of arrival is around 6:30 in the evening for a total flight time of about two hours. We’ve now reached cruising altitude, so the seatbelt signs have been turned off—” and here, another chime sounded. Herc continued, “We do hope you have a pleasant trip. Theresa, Carolyn, you can come up here now if you want.”

“You go,” Carolyn motioned toward the fore of the plane, unbuckling her seatbelt and getting up to let Theresa out of their row. “I’ll go up with you in a little bit.”

“Okay.”

Theresa knocked on the flightdeck door and pushed it open. Douglas was making a few notes on a clipboard, while Herc was taking a sip of coffee. “Hi,” she started. Some inexplicable wave of awkward shyness swirled around her ankles at the normally-soothing sight of the control panels and small screens before her. Almost as if she were seeing it for the first time.

And maybe she was. Maybe more had changed about her perception than she was willing or ready to admit. Not only had she realized she’d taken Martin for granted—maybe she’d taken _flight_ for granted, too. 

Safety was not always guaranteed.

“Have a seat, Theresa,” Douglas invited, pointing at the jumpseat while printing off a clearance from a machine in the central console.

“Thank you,” she managed, folding the seat down and loosely buckling herself in. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Herc said first, putting his coffee in a cupholder and unbuckling his shoulder straps so that he could face Douglas and Theresa in his seat. “Doing all this feels...I don’t know, a little strange.”

“Yes,” Douglas agreed, putting away his notes and undoing his own shoulder straps. After momentarily checking the autopilot, he turned and smiled a little sadly at Theresa. “This has been hard, hasn’t it?”

She nodded. “Have you—I mean, have _either_ of you—ever had to…deal with something like this before?”

“You know all too well about what happened over St Petersburg, so I won’t regale you with _that_ again,” Douglas returned. It was apparent he was endeavoring at a humorous tone, so Theresa attempted a smile back at him. “How about you, Herc, ever been through…?”

Herc shook his head. “Only during the annual humiliation.” Douglas managed a strained chuckle at that, and Herc turned back to Theresa. “Recurrent training. When the airline takes pilots for a couple of days of classroom training, simulators, and workshops...you’ve probably seen the effects of it on…” He caught himself just in time. “Anyway. It’s the simulators I was thinking about, really. The instructors have you fly through all sorts of failures and alarms and emergencies. Did you ever do one of those, Douglas?”

“A few,” Douglas shrugged, but Theresa could sense the topic approaching a sensitive area. “I barely got to try the level D sims—the full immersion ones,” he explained aside to Theresa, “they’ve got the best and most realistic visuals. So much so that instructors aren’t allowed to simulate catastrophic…” He trailed off, looking somewhat chagrined, and looked out of the wide window for a second. “I’m sorry. What on _earth_ am I talking about? I shouldn’t have…”

“No, it’s fine.” Theresa shook her head. “I’m okay.”

“What Douglas is...trying to say,” Herc folded his hands, “is that no. Neither of us have ever been through...through some sort of emergency of that kind on a larger jet, with passengers. Only in training. And engineers are trustworthy, and have rarely— _rarely_ —failed us. That’s the biggest reason why it’s so rare for us to see something like...something like this.”

Theresa nodded. “I understand. I meant that...have you ever had to do this? Sit, and wait for someone that you...that you _know_ might not...but you...oh.” She gave up and focused her gaze on the horizon. Clouds scudding by over the earth, tinged at their edges with pink. Normally, they grounded her; today, they only reminded her of how foreign she was here. How humans encased themselves in cubic meters of metal and pressurized air to ascend to these heights.

Douglas and Herc looked at each other, then Theresa heard Douglas unbuckle the rest of his harness and rise from his seat.

She leaned into him as he put his arms around her. “We’ll be okay,” he murmured. “It will all be fine.”

She wanted to believe him.

* * *

“Thank you, Martin,” Leonie smiled wanly, opening the door to the one bathroom on the abandoned airbase. Unfortunately, it was very good at not staying closed, so he and Leonie had taken it in turns to hold it closed for each other when they weren’t walking around checking on their passengers.

“You’re welcome.” Martin jammed his hands into his coat pockets. He’d pulled it out of the flight deck storage cupboard once he, Hans, and Leonie had deemed it safe for people to venture into what was left of the plane.

They walked out of the squat gray main ops building and looked down the runway at what had once been a robust aircraft.

“It’s too bad about the horizontal stabilizer,” Martin sniffed. They’d rolled while coming in for the landing, resulting in severe damage to their stabilizer and the loss of some of their sensors and communications equipment. Their communications had been rendered totally useless, and it had been nothing short of a miracle that Hans had managed to get the plane on the ground the right way down the first time.

They had no cellular signal up here. People had tried, climbing the roof of the old ops building, holding phones to the sky. Nothing.

At this point, Martin and Leonie had begun walking down the abandoned runway toward the designated triage zone. Leonie fidgeted, adjusting the shirt tied around the makeshift ice pack they’d cobbled together as she squinted down the runway. Hans had tasked them and the purser to talk to some of the injured passengers after their quick break. Thankfully, all the passengers had followed instructions, wore their seatbelts, and braced at the time of the landing, which meant that most of the injuries weren’t severe. 

When all had been said and done and the passenger manifest lists recovered, they’d counted no fatalities among the cabin crew or passengers. 

There had been one fatality registered among the flight crew.

“It’s a shame about...Pierre.” The words came out of Leonie’s mouth as a fog. 

A fog of regret. 

When Hans had pushed their plane to the ground the day of the landing, Pierre had somehow forgotten to properly mount his iPad. 

Blunt force trauma. They’d had no trouble finding some type of doctor on this flight—fortunately, many of their passengers were traveling to a medical conference in Zurich. One of them had leaned over Pierre after they’d hauled him out of the plane and laid him on a makeshift blanket of their uniform jackets on the snow. He had shook his head, murmured a hushed apology, and that had been that.

They had laid him out in one of the abandoned hangars, next to the one where they had somehow managed to shelter about 150 passengers during the first storm, and hoped that it would be cold enough inside to slow the inevitable decay.

The same might have happened to Martin, had he not been looking up to see the tablet rocketing through the flightdeck straight for his head and ducked into brace position just in time.

“You are a lucky man, Crieff.” Leonie looked askance at Martin.

“Not really.” Leonie raised an eyebrow at him, and he checked himself. “Actually, I guess I am...in some respects.” Wanting to change the subject, he asked, “You knew him?”

“No. Actually, I hadn’t flown with him until today. Saw him once or twice around the pilots’ lounge, but of course we were busy doing separate things.”

“Well, it was the same for me too.”

Leonie, who probably found this topic of conversation utterly dry, sighed as they continued down the abandoned runway. “So. Crieff.”

“Yeah.”

“How are you holding up?”

Martin laughed, but it hadn’t a touch of humor or mirth and both of them knew it. “Holding up?”

“Yes.” Leonie looked over at him. “You’re young. You probably haven’t flown...well, that’s to say. This was—supposed to be—your first long-haul, no?”

“Actually...I’ve flown long-haul before, loads of times.”

“Really? At your age?”

“Yeah, uh. When I was with my last airline.”

“Hmm.” Leonie didn’t look like she believed him, but made a very Gallic shrug and moved on. “Anyway. You’re doing fine?”

“I mean...as well as I could be doing at this point.” Martin looked away, over the trees, and a memory flashed into his mind. Another Russian airfield, a bleak grey waiting room, a horrid cup of coffee. “Oh God.” Martin stopped walking.

“What is it?” Leonie stopped with him.

“It’s just...I’m just thinking now of...everyone back home.”

“Ah.” Leonie looked away. “Yes. It’s…”

“Yeah.” Martin massaged his forehead. OJS had probably heard the news by now, and not only them but...

“Do you have...anyone?” Leonie asked him, the last word pointed. She took him by the elbow and shepherded him along toward the triage tent. They had a job to do, after all.

“Well…” Martin winced. “Yes.”

“You winced.”

“Yeah, it’s just…”

“You left on bad terms, didn’t you?”

Martin’s wince turned into a full-on cringe, and he ducked his chin down.

“Oh, Crieff.”

“It’s just that I feel _bad!”_ The last word came out as a near-whine, and Martin tried desperately to rein in his emotions. “I feel horrible! If I’d only known I would’ve never left her the way I—!” He gestured wildly at the end.

Leonie clucked her tongue sympathetically. “I”m sorry.”

Martin scrabbled for a different topic. He didn’t want to talk about this, couldn’t _bear_ to talk about it right now, and yet he had no idea how to take their conversation off this topic.

Theresa had been good at this, had _always_ been good at this talking-to-people thing, but that was because she’d been _trained._ And nobody had told him how to do that, and—

“Well, how about _you?_ ” he shot back. “You have anyone back...home...too? Wherever you’re from?”

Leonie gave him a pained sigh and a hint of a glare. It wasn’t the best question—Leonie was much older than he, and his question would have come across as impertinent. Yet she humored him. “Yes. I’m based in Toulouse. It’s...well, we’ve not been married long, but we’ve been together since—well, a long while.” 

“Toulouse? Like, Toulouse, France? Where Airbus production is?”

Leonie rolled her eyes. “Yes. Toulouse, _France,_ as indicated by the fact that I am French…”

“Right! Sorry. I meant...Airbus?”

“Yes, the place where some Airbus production takes place. She’s a…” Leonie trailed off, eyed him suspiciously.

“An engineer? Wow!” Despite the circumstances, Martin felt a little excited. Here he was, talking to not only another pilot, but the wife of an _Airbus engineer_ —something inside him that was young and poring over magazines was enthralled in this moment. “She works with which...? Or if you can’t say that’s fine too.”

Leonie then did something unexpected: she laughed, clasping her ice pack to her head. “An engineer working with the A350, yes.”

“Why are you laughing?” Martin remembered his disastrous attempt at conversation with Linda and cringed. “I’m sorry, I don’t think it’s funny at…”

“Oh, never mind—mostly just the fact that you skipped completely over the fact I’m married to a woman and went right for the airplane model she works on. Not many people—well, really, nobody’s done that.”

“Oh. Oh, well.” Martin sheepishly put up his hands, and Leonie laughed again.

“To be honest—you seem like a good man, Crieff,” she slung an arm over his shoulder as they approached the triage zone and the passengers sitting on tarps. “I’m sure all will be well when we get out of this godforsaken waste.”

He wanted to believe her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will try to get the last few chapters out soon, but i cannot make any guarantees. if i can be completely honest, it's a tough time right now. much love to those of you who've stuck with me through this <3


	5. oh baby, I am a wreck when I'm without you!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theresa and Maxi run to Fitton to escape scrutiny, but end up finding more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a longer one, because apparently an attempted coup was conducive to my writing faculties. /s
> 
> CW death mention.

From underneath the pillow she’d dragged over her head, Theresa opened her eyes and tried to figure out what had woken her from the only dreamless sleep she’d been able to get since the night before Flight 4176’s departure from Zurich.

In the end, Carolyn had taken her aside and quietly asked her and Maxi to stay with Douglas for the night. 

She didn’t need to tell Theresa why.

Douglas had given Theresa his room, Maxi a guest room, and resolved to take the sofa. If he knew that Carolyn had had Theresa and her brother go to Douglas’ place instead of putting them up in her guest rooms as was normal, he didn’t say, and they had enjoyed a relatively serene evening despite their collective anxiety.

But everything had a catch, didn’t it?

She was awake.

Someone poked her in the shoulder, and Theresa threw the pillow off her head and rose spectacularly to the occasion with a garbled “ _Was isch…_ ”

In the dim of the room, she saw Maxi jump away from her, eyes wide.

“Oh. Maxi. Hi.” Theresa yawned and rubbed her eyes. “What is it? Have they…” the realization woke her up further. “News? More news?”

“No.” Her brother looked down as he kneaded the sheets in his hands, some of his hair hanging over his face. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh.” Theresa shivered a little and pulled more of the sheets over her. “Are you…?”

“I just can’t sleep. I keep thinking so much...” Maxi chanced a glance up at her, through his hair. “Theresa…”

“Yes, Maxi?” Theresa tried to wake up a little further.

“This probably sounds so stupid and I’m not, like, a baby...but like, Tessa, I...I don’t want to be alone right now...Tessa, can I...can I stay here…?”

“Oh, Maxi…” Theresa shifted back, lifted the covers, and put a pillow in the middle of the bed. “Get in.”

“Thanks,” Maxi smiled and pulled some of the covers over him.

“You want it like when you were little, hm?” Theresa asked her brother, reaching over and rubbing circles into his back. “You want a song too?”

Maxi laughed a little. “No, I’m not a _baby.”_

“Suit yourself then,” Theresa rolled back over. Maybe she could try and get some more sleep before the sun rose.

Silence from the other side of the bed, and Theresa was incredulous for a second that Maxi had gone to sleep that quickly.

“Actually, can I...have a song?” her brother muttered.

Theresa smiled into the pillowcase and rolled back over. “What do you want?”

“A song,” Maxi admitted, turning over to look her in the eye. “The one you always wanted to sing to me.”

“Which...oh, you want…” Theresa tried to recall. “Oh! ‘ _Es schneielet, es beielet,’_ am I right?”

“Yes! That one!” Maxi’s eyes crinkled up into a smile, and Theresa laughed quietly.

“Oh Maxi, you loved that one so...you always begged me to sing it, even though it’s a winter song. A song about snow, and birds, and children in the snow...”

“Well, it’s winter now, and I want to hear it.”

“Maxi, it’s been ages…” 

“Oh come _on,_ Tessa, please?”

“Oh, let me see if I can remember it. I think it goes like...” Theresa thought hard, then propped her head up on her arm. “Okay, here goes…” She cleared her throat and began to sing quietly so as not to make too much noise in the quiet house. 

_Es schneielet, es beielet, es geit ä chüele Wind. Und d'Meitschi lege d'Händsche a und d'Buebe loufe gschwind…_

“It’s just like you always sang it,” Maxi murmured once she’d finished. “Why did you sing it all the time?”

“You would ask for it, first of all.” Theresa reached out and brushed some of her brother’s hair out of his eyes. As much as the longer hair suited his face, she had to admit that he really needed a haircut to meet the uniform requirements at school. She made a mental note to get him to a barber once this all blew over. “But...well, I liked it when I was little...I thought you might like it too.”

“Why did _you_ like it, then?”

“Well...the meaning, I suppose. There’s children, and they’re in the snow. But some of them have got gloves and such for cold weather, and bread to eat, and the others...don’t. They’re like the birds, and _they_ don’t have clothes to stay warm in the snow either.”

“So?”

“Erm…” Theresa struggled to explain. “Well, there’s bread, in the bag, and the song says if you’ve got that bag of bread, you should give some to the poorest child. And I guess...I guess I was thinking about us, being brought up in the castle, and we’re so far away from real people, aren’t we? We have all the bread, we have the warm clothes in the winter—actually, most of our country does, but that’s beside the point. What I’m saying is...Our parents kept us away from everyone else...we kept everyone at arms’ length...I mean, we _do_ practice charity and generosity and all that but...there are always cameras, there are always people watching, so there’s this element of...facetiousness? I guess something about this song just...resonated with me.”

“Hm.” Maxi contemplated sleepily. “So...you wanted to teach me about inequality of conditions? And how we’re inherently disingenuous whenever we deal with other people because of us being royal and all of the implications that has?”

How was a fifteen-year-old coming up with these things better than she? “Maybe I did.”

Maxi fell silent, and Theresa was convinced he’d actually fallen asleep until he piped up, “You’re weird.”

“Oh, well, tell me something I don’t know. Go to sleep, Maxi.” Theresa gently patted her brother’s face before pulling away and rolling onto her back. A thought was congealing in her head, but she hadn’t yet figured out exactly what it meant.

She meant to ask Maxi if he was still struggling to sleep, but as she opened her mouth to whisper his name, her brother began to snore.

Theresa sighed and gave up on getting more sleep.

Sitting up slowly, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and got up, pulling on a pair of socks. Picking her way around the bed, she pulled the covers up and over Maxi, then bent over him and pressed a little kiss to her younger brother’s right temple.

Theresa had been in Douglas’ house enough times to be familiar with the layout, but she still proceeded slowly down the hall and stairs, not wanting to make any noise whatsoever that could wake him. She paused at his hall closet and pulled out her coat as quietly as she could, putting it on over her nightgown before turning back the way she’d come and gingerly retracing her steps to enter Douglas’ kitchen. 

Picking up a glass, she stepped over to the sink and filled it halfway with water. As she drank, she leaned back against one of his cupboards and stared at the wall clock. The moon had gotten the same idea to check the time and had cast some light over the clock’s hands, which in turn informed Theresa that it was just past two in the morning. She gently set the empty glass near the sink’s edge and unlocked the side door to the yard.

She buttoned up her coat, closed the door, and sat on the chilly step, careful not to let her nightgown drag on the concrete.

How had the song gone again?

_Es früred alli Vögeli und alli arme Chind_

Was Martin cold, wherever he was?

How damaged was the plane? Could they get their things from it, or had it gone up in a conflagration, everything ruined…

Fuel. So much fuel in those massive tanks, for a trip from Beijing to Zurich. Enough friction of metal on earth, one spark, and the game was up.

The storm. There had been a storm. Hadn’t they said that, over and over again at the crisis center, when family members asked when would be the soonest they could hear from their loved ones?

_Es beielet_

The snowflakes were a swarm of bees swirling around the wreck of the 777, because this long without information, it _must_ be a wreck.

Martin hadn’t brought his good gloves, the ones Theresa had bought him when he moved to Zurich. 

_I would know the nice ones. You forget, I was an alpine girl once._

They were on top of his console, next to his television. Forgotten.

Or left on purpose?

Was he truly that bitter, that he would risk freezing his fingers off so as not to bring horrible thoughts of her with him?

Or had he expected this to be a normal flight? A routine maneuver. There and back in a few days. Just another flight, like the thousands of others that spanned the globe. No need for the good gloves if you were just going out with your crewmates, out for some local food or mild sightseeing, or just down to the lobby or the hotel gym.

Theresa let her head fall into her hands again and scrubbed at her eyes, the tips of her fingers pressing up against her eyelids, eyelashes against her hands.

The door opened softly behind her, and Theresa turned around, half-expecting Maxi to be there.

Douglas was standing in the doorway, rubbing his arms. “Can’t sleep either?” he asked Theresa softly.

Theresa shook her head and shifted aside on the step, patting the concrete next to her.

Douglas came forward, closed the door, and sat next to her. He hadn’t put a coat on, but he didn’t seem to care very much about it.

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” Theresa said, looking up at him.

“No. You didn’t. Don’t worry about it.” He paused. “I haven’t slept. Were you able to…”

“Maybe four hours?”

“Well, that’s...decent.”

“It’s the first straight sleep I’ve been able to have since before…” Theresa didn’t finish.

“Ah.”

It was a bitterly cold night, and the silence between them was equally frigid—not out of unfriendliness or antipathy, but sheer anxiety.

“You’re not cold?” she asked Douglas.

“Well...I am a bit. But I’m not going inside.” Douglas stared out over the trees on the edge of a neighbor’s garden. “It must be colder than this for Martin.”

Theresa bit her lip and stared at the ground, hoping she would be able to feel something from the action. “That’s actually what...what I was thinking, myself.”

“What was the song you were singing to Maxi?” Douglas asked. “I know a little bit of German, but I didn’t understand a lot of it.”

“You wouldn’t, it’s in Swiss German. Not High German. And really, I was that loud?”

“That’s what I thought. And no, you weren’t being loud, it’s just...sound sticks out when it’s been so quiet. Maxi couldn’t sleep either?”

“Yeah.” Theresa nodded. Douglas huddled closer to her. “You _are_ cold,” she looked up again, throwing him an accusatory look. “Here.” She unbuttoned her coat, rose, and shrugged it off. “Under this. Maybe we’ll fit.”

Douglas looked amused, but acquiesced and huddled underneath the coat with her as best he could.

“There, that’s better,” Theresa declared. “Maxi couldn’t sleep, so he came over. He woke me up, unfortunately, but...well, this has been hard on him. As it has been on all of us, but...it really got to him, hearing the news.”

“Where was he when…?”

“His birthday party. I heard the news first, he overheard my adviser taking me out of the room and telling me.”

Douglas winced. “Ooh. That’s got to…”

“Yeah. I hadn’t meant for him to hear it like that...he must have snuck out of the party to hear what Franz was telling me.”

“I’m sorry.” Douglas put his hand, palm up, on his knee, and Theresa looked up at him before taking it.

“I’ve been noticing it more. He’s still a child, but I can’t protect him from it anymore. He’s growing more and more invested in what I’m doing.” She looked up at the sky. “I think...I think he’s realizing that this...I mean what I’m doing. It’s going to be his life. I’m going to give it to him in a few years.” She smiled back at Douglas, but it wasn’t a particularly happy one. “And…” she stopped.

“And what?”

“What am I going to have? What am I going to be left with? If I give this to Maxi, and it’s not an _if,_ actually, it’s a requirement...what the hell am I going to do with myself? What’s going to be left for me? I used to think I would at least have Martin, but now I don’t. I don’t even know if, when the storm or whatever’s clogging up communications lifts...I don’t know if I’ll...I’ll have _him._ ”

Douglas put his other hand on top of hers and huddled closer to her.

“I mean, granted,” Theresa rambled, “I don’t even know if I’ll _have_ him if it turns out he’s okay and he’s been okay this whole time. I don’t even know if _he’ll_ be willing to have _me_.”

“What? Theresa, don’t say that.” Douglas’ eyebrows jumped up on his forehead. “Martin loves you, okay? He does. You have always taken him seriously, and really, believe me, he talks about that more than he talks about planes nowadays, he appreciates that more th—”

“You don’t _know_ what happened.” She snapped before she could restrain herself, and Douglas pulled away slightly, face melting from concern to affront. “Wait. Douglas. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”

“Well...what _happened?”_

“I’ve been realizing, in bits and pieces...I haven’t been taking Martin as seriously as you tell me I have. The weight of expectation...it was too much for him. I didn’t even notice. All the times he screwed up around my family, and I laughed at him...it was just another weight on his back, and.” Theresa shrugged. “The straw that broke the elephant’s back. Or whatever the saying is.”

“I think it’s _camel,_ but…seriously, Theresa, you can’t be thinking that _that_ equates to you failing…”

“He called me a burden. He called me a burden, okay?” Theresa interrupted him, now on a roll. “And all that tells me is that I’ve failed him. I’ve forced him to measure up to exorbitant standards I never even set myself, and treated him like a court jester when he failed.”

Douglas cringed. “Well, I don’t think he should have—”

“He was justified to call me that. Actually, the word choice was bad. Terrible, even. I wish he hadn’t used that exact word, because maybe I would have reacted better. But the criticism was there, and it was real. If...I’m never able to vouch for that to his face, I just want _someone_ to know his criticism was justified. I got it. I get it. And instead of just _taking_ the criticism in the moment like an adult, I acted like a great big _child,_ and I didn’t even tell him goodbye when I dropped him off at the airport before going to Bern. And I didn’t even text him when he texted me to tell me he was safely in Beijing. Or when he was leaving Beijing. I was tacking up stupid little decorations in the stupid little room that the stupid embassy let us use.” 

In Douglas’ hands, Theresa’s hands were shaking, unconsciously shredding Maxi’s birthday celebrations. Douglas leaned down and squeezed her hands.

“Now do you get it?” Theresa asked finally.

“I understand you. Does it feel better now that you’ve...”

“Thank you.” Theresa let out her breath in a sigh, stared at the sky again. “As for whether I’ll feel better...”

An airplane passed above them, position lights blinking green and red. The left ones were always on the left, the green on the right, and the rear-facing lights were white. If she squinted she could make out the red anti-collision beacon on the plane’s belly. 

Douglas didn’t ask her to finish her sentence.

“You know how to tell whether the anti-collision beacons are LEDs or not?” Theresa asked Douglas.

“I mean...no. I never gave that much thought.”

“It’s probably not that one,” Theresa nodded to the sky, “because it looks like a flash. So the one up there’s a xenon arc lamp. If it were an LED it wouldn’t flash, it would stay on longer. That’s how you can tell.” She looked back at him. “I just realized. I never told you about what the song’s about.”

“Well, you don’t have to.” Douglas’ face was once again filled with concern.

“No, I want to. Otherwise I’ll keep…” She didn’t want to keep saying it.

“In that case…” Douglas let go of her hand and put his arm over her shoulder, careful not to let her coat fall to the ground, “tell me all about it.”

* * *

Douglas’ phone rang where it rested in a cupholder, and Theresa startled to attention.

“Can you get that?” Douglas nodded to it, flicking his turn signal and checking his mirrors briefly.

Theresa picked it up and checked the contact.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Carolyn.” Theresa answered the call and put it on speakerphone.

“Carolyn, hello. I’m driving,” Douglas said, turning off his signal.

“Douglas. Hello. Where are you?”

“Just making the turn into the airfield car park. Sorry we’re late, we...had a late morning.” Douglas looked at Theresa out of the corner of his eyes, who scrunched up her nose. She’d fallen asleep somewhere between night and dawn and woken up, several hours later, on Douglas’ sofa with Maxi sitting and watching videos on one of Douglas’ armchairs.

“Oh. Well, turn around as soon as you can, don’t get out of the car.” Carolyn sounded harried.

“What?” Douglas shot a look at Theresa as they rolled past the disused terminal buildings toward the office.

“We’re driving home. We took one look at the office and turned right back around.”

“What do you mean? We didn’t see you going out...” Theresa asked.

“Well...someone must have dug back into Martin’s work history. There are cameras and journalists crowded outside our office. They didn’t notice us. Meet us back at our house instead.”

“Good Lord.” Douglas chanced a glance toward the portacabins. “Okay, wilco. We’ll be there in a bit.”

“See you then.” Carolyn hung up, and Theresa put Douglas’ phone back into the cupholder.

“Don’t they have anything better to do?” Maxi asked from the back of the car, only barely looking up from the game on his phone. “Than harass people related to the pilots?”

“Well...put yourself in the shoes of the passengers,” Theresa turned halfway to address Maxi. “They want some kind of explanation. And the simplest path to one is the pilots.”

“But what good is it going to do? They told us it was an engine failure,” Maxi argued. “There we go. That’s an explanation.”

“It’s more than that.” Douglas briefly looked at Maxi in the rear view mirror. “People have been trained to believe that air travel is very safe—it is, I’m not denying that—but when something terrible happens, as…” He made a movement with his head. “Well, they don’t just want _something_ to blame, they will also look for some _one_ to blame. Air travel is so safe as an institution, that it’s easy to assume that it’s the pilot’s mistake if something bad happens. Whereas, the street goes both ways. Technology can only go so far; pilots can only do the best they can in the moment.”

The office came into view, and sure enough, a group of journalists were milling around the foot of the ramp, waiting with cameras and gazing around expectantly.

“Maxi, you might want to duck down,” Theresa nervously glanced over her shoulder, looking at the cars around them. 

Douglas noticed and said, “Good point. I’ll go to Carolyn’s by a different route, just in case. You duck too.”

Theresa loosened her seatbelt and slid down in her seat as Douglas turned around in the carpark and navigated out.

Some minutes later, Carolyn let them into her house, shutting the door as soon as Maxi had gotten himself into the entryway and looking outside suspiciously.

“It’s okay,” Douglas took off his jacket and hung it up. “You didn’t think I would check for people following me?”

“I’m just being careful. Theresa, come with me. You’re okay?”

“We’re fine, thank you,” Theresa followed Carolyn to the kitchen and accepted a cup of coffee with a grateful nod to Arthur, who was pulling snacks out of a cupboard.

“Theresa, good morning,” Herc leaned in the doorway of the kitchen. “When you’re ready, I’ve got to ask you some things in the sitting room?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Theresa nodded distractedly, adding a splash of milk and substantially more sugar than usual.

“So, Theresa,” Herc asked in the sitting room, bending over a laptop. “Social media...have you got any accounts?”

“Not really. Just my official one, but I don’t directly run it all the time. It’s mostly run by the household.” Theresa sat in a chair Herc offered her. “Why?”

“I was going to ask if you followed Martin on any platforms.”

“No, I don’t. I was under the impression Martin didn’t _use_ social media,” Theresa looked at Herc over the rim of her cup and absentmindedly gave Snoopadoop a scratch behind the ears.

“I keep telling you, he should be on Tiktok,” Maxi flopped onto the floor next to Snoopadoop and wrapped his arms around the dog. “He’d be good. He’s got the look.”

“Maxi, I literally don’t know what you’re talking about,” she looked down at her brother as he sprawled on Carolyn’s floor. “Get up,” she added, slipping a warning into her tone and staying in English for Carolyn’s benefit. “This is _Carolyn’s_ house.”

“No, don’t worry about it,” Carolyn waved a hand, walking in with more snacks. “Snoopadoop seems to like him.”

“I’ll sit with you,” Arthur offered, putting his snacks on a side table and sitting with Maxi. “I’ve got Monopoly, maybe we could play later, all of us?”

“I’d like that, actually,” Maxi mumbled. “But Theresa. How do you not know about Tiktok, I’ve showed you some—”

“Oh, the dance videos? Maxi, I keep telling you, I can’t _do_ those.”

“You were good at the ‘choose your character’ bit you did when you dressed up in all your favorite ballgowns during ball season.”

“Maxi, stop.” Behind Maxi, Theresa could see Douglas suppressing a titter. “And you _better_ not have actually posted that—”

“I didn’t!”

“—I’m literally on the diplomatic mission to the United Nations, I can’t be seen doing...well, _that._ ”

“Gretel thinks you were also really good at the trend where you lip-synced that Japanese word in different emotional inflections—”

“Maxi, _not right now._ Herc, what were you saying?” she turned back, trying to regain whatever dignity she’d lost from the exchange. “About Martin and social media?”

“You said Martin didn’t use social media?” If Herc had found any amusement from Maxi and Theresa’s side conversation, he didn’t show it.

“Yes. Why?”

“Well, they’ve found an account.”

“Knowing him, it’s probably pictures of planes and Duxford museum,” Douglas took a seat and pulled out his phone to refresh the news item about Martin’s flight.

“Yes. Instagram,” Herc clarified. “It’s all plane pictures.”

“Well, that can’t be bad, can it?” Theresa took another sip of coffee.

“No, it isn’t...but I’m just looking into some of the more...I don’t know, maybe not as trustworthy news sites, and they’re speculating something about him because he took a picture of an exhibit chronicling an air disaster—a hijacking…” Herc cringed. “It’s such a reach, but…”

“People will take anything and run with it,” Douglas rolled his eyes.

“Ugh, I don’t want to see it,” Theresa massaged her head with a hand. “What am I going to _do?_ I didn’t even know he _had_ an account.”

“Right, it’s not been updated since Martin was still with MJN. That’s how long it’s been inactive, and they’re _still_ chasing that.”

“It’s desperation, pure and simple.” Douglas locked his phone and put it facedown on the arm of his chair.

“Well, what are we going to do about it?” Carolyn asked, reading the article over Herc’s shoulder and frowning.

“I think…” Theresa set her drink down and pulled out her phone. “I’ll call Franz. See if we can release a statement through the household, but in my name as a private citizen. A ‘friend’ or something. Don’t they write about those sometimes? Profiles of the people onboard and their families?”

“That’s a good idea. Yes, do that,” Herc nodded.

Theresa sighed and dialed Franz’s number.

How much longer could they go on like this?

* * *

**_Relatives’ agonizing wait for information_ **

_As a system of winter storms prevents communication with downed Swiss Air Boeing 777, and thus prevents determination of the fate of the 303 souls onboard, colleagues and loved ones are on tenterhooks for more information as to the state of the passengers and crew…_

**_First Officer Martin Crieff, 3_ —**

_Described as an “aviation enthusiast with a passion for his profession” by his friends and a “genuine and caring man” by his girlfriend of —_ _years, First Officer Crieff was a relief pilot on his first long-haul flight with Swiss Air on their relatively new 777 fleet. He had previously flown 737s around Europe, and before that had spent several years with a small charter airline based in the United Kingdom, his country of birth._

_“He’s a meticulous person,” a spokesman for the family told the —, “and has always been preoccupied with doing things the right way._

_We are still holding out hope for his return.”_

* * *

“How on earth,” Leonie called out from her perch on a defunct voltage box, “are your feet not cold?”

Martin paused from where he’d been rhythmically shoveling snow off a taxiway with a shovel they’d found among other equipment in an abandoned shed. Another storm system had swept through the area, and Hans had come up with this idea to help keep people occupied and moving if they so chose. “I would tell you, but you’d probably laugh at me.”

From farther down the way, Hans overheard and let out a snort of laughter. He paused, leaning on his shovel. “I think no matter what you’d say, we’d laugh, Crieff Cushion.”

“Oh, come _on!”_ Martin groused. “Not the Crieff Cushion _again_.”

Leonie clutched her ice pack and laughed at him, swinging her feet against the side of the box. “Come on. Divulge your secrets. I have got both my good pairs of socks on _and_ someone else’s shoes and I’m still cold.”

“Yes, Martin,” Hans added. “You’ve got nothing to lose.”

“Well…” Martin’s shovel dangled loosely from his hands. “I wear shoe inserts for height—”

“ _He wears shoe inserts for height!”_ Leonie pushed the pitch of her voice up as she pointed at him, and Hans bent over his shovel, giggling.

“It’s _added insulation,”_ Martin cried plaintively.

“So _that’s_ how you reach the rudder pedal,” Leonie grinned, but Martin had been teased enough times at this point to know that nothing here was said out of malice, that it was all in good fun, and that of course they would need some lighter moments to break up the gravity of the situation they were still trapped in.

It had been four days since they had landed. Martin still thought about it, sometimes, when there wasn’t anything else to distract him from doing so.

There had been the initial scramble. Masks thrown off, buckles unfastening—the frantic shutdown, the three of them shouting at the sight of Pierre dangling limply over his controls, still buckled into his harness, his face swelling beyond recognition, and the bloodied tablet lying on the floor next to Martin.

They had had no choice but to burst out of the flightdeck to meet their cabin crew, yelling at their passengers to _open the wing exits, slides will inflate!_ _GO, down the slides, shoes off, take nothing with you! Hold the slides down, help your fellow passengers! Go, go!_ in German and English and French, and different passengers had taken and repeated the commands in Mandarin and Cantonese and Korean and Japanese and every conceivable tongue that could have been spoken on that flight.

The evacuation—and Martin remembered scrambling over the tops of economy seats, shouting for anyone still on the plane to come forward, to take their turn down the slides, to leave everything behind. He had seen the last flight attendant down the rear slide before his colleagues had yelled for him to come back and help them take Pierre out of the plane.

At last, they had enlisted the help of some of their medically trained passengers to catch the senior first officer at the bottom of the slide before taking the checklists and passenger manifests and evacuating the plane themselves.

Hans had been the last off the plane, and Martin remembered turning around as he and Leonie ran from the foot of the slide. He had seen the senior captain, small in the door of his massive jet, tie stirring a little in the breeze. A scene from a disaster movie, the last one standing.

In that moment it had fully struck Martin, how insignificant they had been in the sky. How small they were, how big the plane was, how much bigger the heavens were.

They could have died, falling out of the sky.

But they hadn’t.

And then Hans had tucked his arms in and jumped onto the slide to meet them.

Of course, everything else from that day had passed in a sickening blur. Carrying Pierre off the snowy airfield and into an abandoned hangar, whose lock had corroded and fallen to the ground, laying him on top of their uniform jackets as if he could still feel that he wasn’t lying on concrete.

It would probably always remain uncertain whether he had died alone or with his colleagues around him.

There had been a moment of dignity in that moment when the three remaining pilots and the passengers who’d stopped whatever they were doing to watch them had stood around Pierre in the hangar. Hans had taken the lead, placing Pierre’s union pilot identification on his chest and draping his handkerchief over Pierre’s bloodied face, then putting his arm over Leonie’s and then Martin’s shoulders as they had stood at Pierre’s feet.

But they had to go back to work after that. They had a job to do.

They had helped the cabin crew and various doctors onboard to tend to injured passengers, pressing makeshift ice packs to head after head, wrapping bandages around cuts until the first aid kits had run out. A twisted ankle from landing the wrong way at the foot of the slide. A sprained wrist from catching an elderly woman, who had sobbed in gratitude, clutching at the young doctor who’d caught her.

And then had come the first storm, and they had had to shepherd the makeshift triage center and groups of uninjured passengers inside the abandoned ops building and another hangar. Together, silently, they had huddled and waited for morning. That had been the first night. Few of them, if any, had slept.

Martin also remembered picking his way out of the buildings the next morning, greeted with a bleak morning and a layer of snow on the taxiways. Hans and Leonie and him and the rest of the crew had walked around groups of stunned passengers sitting in the snow, consoling, answering questions. There had been tears, gratitude, _you all are heroes, it’s unbelievable,_ _how did you do it?_ and Hans had taken it all with grace and smiled, but it had been a very pained smile. After a while he had stopped smiling altogether and told Leonie and Martin to go on without him.

Leonie’s concussion hadn’t been severe, thankfully, but a few doctors were keeping an eye on her condition to make sure it didn’t worsen.

They had passed the first day and night without much in the way of food except baskets of peanuts a flight attendant had thoughtfully thrown onto the rear slide before jumping off the plane. Luckily, the snow by the side of the runway seemed clean, so they had used that for drink.

Then had been the discovery of a ladder in a closet and the first tentative steps into the cabin, passing bags and coats and laptops from the overhead compartments out of the plane and to the passengers one by one. Another flight attendant had come up with the idea of lowering the breakfast and lunch service to the ground with an inflatable raft and an emergency rope. That had taken a whole day by itself.

Without a cellular signal and barred access from their things in the hold, people had found the subsequent days of walking around the abandoned airbase to be a rather boring time, except for the opportunity to survey their fellow passengers. A baby with round cheeks, bundled in layers of clothing and a deep red blanket from business class, who smiled his little one-tooth grin whenever he saw his father. Another toddler who had taken a liking to Hans’ hat, so much so that Hans had given it to her as Martin and Leonie giggled together behind his back. There had been some older children on the flight, and they tired themselves out running in the snow, writing their names in the slush. Even the most grizzled of strategy consultants couldn’t help but crack a smile whenever they saw the children making the most of their situation.

Some gathered and socialized, telling each other stories—of loves back home, children they had left behind, friends they were supposed to be meeting. There had been a few exchange students, some going back to the familiarity of home and others to unfamiliar schools and new experiences. They joked about getting exemptions from assignments because of this.

But four days had passed, with no help, no communications.

It was fascinating, really, how positive everyone was trying to be.

“ _Helloooo._ Earth to Martin?”

Martin shook his head and looked up. Leonie was leaning halfway off her box, waving a hand to and fro in front of him.

“You okay, Martin?” Hans asked, putting down his shovel and walking over.

“He’s been _doing_ this,” Leonie said, leaning back on her hands. “Just staring off into space for minutes on end. Come on, Martin. If you need a rest, just say. Nobody here doubts that you’re doing your best, okay? You’re young, this is hard, we’ve just been in an actual _crash landing_ , don’t worry. We get it.”

“She’s right, kid,” Hans crossed his arms. “We spend our whole careers planning and preparing for something like this, but really. As far as first times go, this one’s crap. It’s okay if you’re not up to doing everything we’re doing. You don’t even have to _be_ around us all the time. If you want some time to yourself that _isn’t_ in the restroom, that’s okay too.”

“No,” Martin shook his head, but the word came out as a squeak and he knew his face was starting to flame. “No, it’s okay, I don’t...I really don’t want to be alone right now, you...you know what I mean?”

“That’s fair.” Hans nodded, an understanding look crossing his face. “Missing anyone?”

“Ooh, careful, that’s a touchy topic. Don’t get him started,” Leonie scrambled to her feet on top of the box and looked out to the surrounding plain, stretching out her back.

“Careful up there, Leonie,” Hans called out before turning back to Martin with a rather sly grin. “So. Martin. Man to man here. You’ve _got_ someone?”

Martin rolled his eyes. This again...it seemed like everything had been precisely calculated to make him feel as guilty as possible about how he and Theresa had been toward each other before this flight. The crash itself, the loss of communications, the wait for any sort of assistance. “Yes, I have...” _Or not._

“Really, Martin!” Hans started on a round of teasing. “I almost don’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” Leonie said, still looking out over the plains with both hands shading her eyes. “He’s even showed me pictures. Apparently she’s in diplomacy? Government. One of those. She seems very lovely.”

“Ooh, can _I_ see?” Hans asked with another sly smile.

“Phone’s dead,” Martin lied, but he couldn’t suppress the mirthful smile passing across his face.

Hans looked satisfied at the sight of a smile on Martin’s face, but nevertheless continued. “So where do you put the cushion when you two—”

“My _God,_ Hans!” Leonie squawked, but doubled over in laughter.

“Hey, well, I _said_ this was man to man.”

“Instead of that, ask him if she’s _still_ taller than him if he wears the shoe inserts—” Leonie suggested, straightening up, then cut herself off. “Wait. Oh my God! Wait, what?”

“Leonie?” Hans squinted up at the training captain. “What is it?”

“Look!” Leonie gestured to a point straight ahead of her. Hans and Martin followed her gaze but, seeing nothing, squinted back up at her. “Get up here.”

Hans and Martin scrambled on top of Leonie’s box with her help and looked in the direction of her shaking hand, then looked frantically at each other.

A battalion of armored vehicles, vans, and ambulances with lights flashing were rolling along what must have been an access road to the airbase, stopping occasionally to move road blocks out of their way.

“ _Ich glaub mich knutscht ein Elch,”_ Hans muttered under his breath, rubbing his face as if doing so might reset his vision. Finding that their salvation had indeed come, he turned back to Martin and Leonie with the widest grin on his face. “Well…would you look at that.”

Leonie whipped off the scarf she’d taken out of her flight bag and waved it around above her head, yelling, “Here! Here!”

And sure enough, one of the drivers honked their horn in response.

Martin felt a wild swoop of joy somewhere in his stomach. They were saved.

“We’ve got to tell everyone,” Leonie gasped, crouching and slipping off the box. “Come on!”

Martin could no longer restrain himself—he jumped off the box, whooping like a schoolboy. Hans laughed at him and followed, leaving the shovels behind.

“They’re here! The rescue services are here!” Leonie shouted as they ran toward the main group of people, the makeshift triage station. 

“What!” The purser was carrying one of the smaller children on her shoulders. She let the child slip down to the ground and quickly told him to go to his parents in hushed Cantonese. As the child ran away, she turned back to the pilots. “How did—”

“Climbed on top of a box and saw! They’ll be on the runway at any moment,” Martin added, anxious to help.

The passengers were slowly relaying the message to each other, running to the ops building and calling their colleagues over to the main runway, and gathering around the three pilots. Murmurs of excitement began to rise from the crowd.

“Okay,” Hans called out, motioning with his hands for everyone to settle down. The cabin crew stood ready to translate. “I know we’re all anxious to get out of this wasteland, but we have to do this right. The priority must be those who are injured, no matter how minor. I saw ambulances among the rescue teams—there will probably be more. But injured people go first.”

He paused and waited for his message to be distributed through the crowd.

“I’m quite certain they will have brought members of the press. Perhaps there will be cameras. Your families and friends and colleagues will probably be watching footage from here—keep that in mind. In case anyone wants to make a wardrobe change, somehow…”

Laughter rose among the English-speaking passengers at the joke, and then from the rest of the passengers as his words were translated.

“Finally, I want to say this before all the rescue crews come.” Hans gazed levelly among the crowd, and the laughter quieted. “The three of us, your pilots—me, Hans Vogel,” he pointed at himself, “your backup captain, Leonie Moreau,” he gestured to Leonie, “and your backup first officer, Martin Crieff,” he gestured to Martin, “would certainly agree that we have been proud and honored to have been your pilots on this flight. We would also like to thank you. Our passengers, our fellow Swiss Air crew—for taking leadership before, during, and after we came to this airbase. For going out of your way to help each other, and to help us. Over the past few days, you have told us we were the heroes. Us, and Pierre—and I regret he isn’t here with us today.” He paused and sighed. “But we were not the heroes. We did what we had to do. You went beyond what you needed to do.”

“They’re here!” someone yelled from across the airfield, and the pilots turned.

A jeep was waiting impatiently at the gate to the main airfield, a rescue team member in fatigues jumping out of the front seat and running up to the gate. One of the passengers was running toward them. “They want the pilots here.”

“Thank you, everyone!” Hans shouted to the group, and polite applause broke out.

“Let’s go,” he told Leonie and Martin, and they raced to meet the rescue teams.

And there came another blur of action—opening the gate, coming face to face with a team leader, shaking hands vigorously all around. The translator, beaming from ear to ear at the sight of the mass of passengers and crew on the tarmac.

The manifest lists being passed to the proper authorities, the leader’s eyes widening when the translator had confirmed that only one soul had been lost in the crash.

And then the vehicles rolled in, and cabin crew were helping the injured into ambulances, and journalists were pulling out camera equipment and chatting excitedly among themselves, sending reports back to their news stations. Investigators were already driving toward the plane to retrieve the data and voice recorders, flashing peace signs at the pilots as their truck roared across the shoveled taxiways.

As the first reports reached the airwaves and passed over the land to Western European television stations, as news channels stopped their programming and flashed _Special Report_ and _Breaking News_ title cards across their screens, Theresa let out a little faint scream and collapsed onto Carolyn’s sofa, Maxi and the rest of OJS racing into the sitting room to see what had happened.

They read the news ticker with bated breath, the headline scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Words flashing past, typed hurriedly, a typo—but the message was clear.

Then screams of happiness, Maxi jumping up and down, for once abandoning his phone; Douglas and Theresa dancing a botched version of the Czech polka, laughing; then Theresa grabbing Arthur’s hands and whirling with him around the room; Carolyn and Herc smiling in utter relief.

The wait, finally, had come to an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [here's a recording of the song mentioned.](https://youtu.be/Q3tKWa9-fbk) all errors with interpretation or transcription of the Swiss German are, of course, mine. 
> 
> last chapter should go up in the next week...among other things. obligatory wink wink.


	6. and if I could take it all back, I swear that I would pull you from the tide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A homecoming and a reconciliation.

Theresa wrapped her arms around Douglas as they watched the live reports come into the newsroom. 

“For those of you just joining us, Russian authorities have just reported that they have regained contact with Swiss Air flight 4176 at the airbase where they were forced to make an emergency landing, after four days of no communication due to a severe winter storm in the area,” the anchor, framed by Carolyn’s television, read from a sheet of paper. 

“It’s over,” Theresa laughed, turning to Douglas and leaning her head on his shoulder. “They’ve found them. It’s okay.”

“They were found by a recovery team, who, after consulting with the flight crew of the downed plane and with paramedics, have announced that all but one of the 287 passengers and 16 crew onboard the crashed liner have survived. Among the survivors, the statement reads that they have suffered ‘minor, non-life threatening injuries.’ The family of the one soul who was lost, the authorities add, are being notified.” 

“My goodness,” Carolyn said, slumping into an armchair and massaging her head. “One death? Out of...what, 300? It sounds almost…”

“I know, it seems a little weird,” Herc added, leaning over the back of her chair and squinting at the television. “Well, perhaps it was a non-related emergency or something. Otherwise...the crew must have done a marvelous job.”

“So when will Martin come home, do you think?” Arthur mused from his seat on the floor with Maxi.

“We’re receiving live images now from the airfield in Russia.” On the screen, the anchors were put in split-screen view with a bleak, wintry landscape and a broken plane. 

“Goodness,” Douglas murmured. “That airplane is not going to be flying anytime soon.”

Three pilots in Swiss Air uniforms were standing by an ambulance, consulting with each other and a soldier, reading off lists and papers while gesturing around the airfield.

“Is that him?” Maxi asked, pointing.

They collectively leaned forward and zeroed in on the screen.

“Which one? It’s not too clear,” Theresa managed, heart pounding.

“You looking at the one in the middle, Maxi?” Herc tried.

“No, that’s not Martin, that pilot is too tall and he doesn’t own a scarf like that,” Theresa shook her head.

“Do _none_ of you have brains today?” Carolyn demanded, but she couldn’t hide the fact that she was still smiling. “It has been _four_ days. His hair _can’t_ be that long. Women pilots exist, in case you’re not aware…”

“So _that_ must be him,” Douglas got up and pointed at the pilot farthest to the right. “Right there!”

“Oh!” Theresa rose to join him and sat up closer to the screen. Sure enough, Martin was in earnest conversation with the pilot next to him. The whole group seemed to be grinning ear to ear—perhaps sharing good news with the soldier.

A paramedic raced up to the pilots and gestured toward the pilot Martin had been talking with, who looked up momentarily at a point to the right of the camera.

“See?” Carolyn sat back, a hint of triumph in her tone.

Theresa pulled out her phone, ignored the messages cascading in from her sisters, and opened the updating article about Martin’s flight. Quickly scanning, she looked back at the screen and announced, “That must be the training captain. Leonie Moreau.”

“Oh, so she’s _training_ to be a captain?” Maxi wondered aloud.

“No,” Herc explained gently. “She’s a captain who’s been flying with the airline long enough that she’s been tasked with training junior first officers. Martin must have been assigned to her.”

Within the screen, Leonie leaned toward the paramedic, a confused expression on her face, before quickly leaning away and waving him off. On either side of her, Martin and the other pilot—Theresa guessed it could be either Hans Vogel or Pierre Guerin, as none of the pilots had their uniform blazers on—were emphatically saying something that could either be _Go_ or _No,_ pushing Leonie gently back towards the paramedic.

“What are they _doing?”_ Theresa muttered, leaning closer to the screen. Leonie was holding out what appeared to be a snowball, pointing at it and then her head.

The footage abruptly cut to a different area of the airfield, to investigators who’d ostensibly been tasked with finding the data and cockpit voice recorders from the tail of the downed plane.

They let out a collective sound of displeasure at not being able to see Martin, but nevertheless stayed quiet as they took in the wreckage of his plane.

“We’re now seeing images of the international investigation team with the Swiss Air Boeing triple-seven that came down here, HB-AKW—a series of letters I think we all are familiar with by now,” an anchor narrated. “Word is coming in that they have been able to recover the black box and will be carrying it out soon—and as we say that, there they are.”

Several team members—and Theresa could make out a number of Swiss and Russian investigators working in tandem, with their respective flags on their uniforms—were carrying out a mounting platform, atop which was bolted a set of orange metal containers with _ENREGISTREUR DE VOL NE PAS OUVRIR_ printed in large letters on the side.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a set of those being taken out—erm, intact...before,” Herc murmured into his hand.

The camera followed the investigators as they staggered a little under the weight of the recording equipment, then lowered it onto a tarp in front of the cameras.

“Wait,” Douglas put up a hand suddenly. “Everyone. Look in the background of the shot, outside that one hangar. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

“What are you—the ambulance parked there?” Theresa squinted back at the screen.

And then the door to the hangar opened, and while the anchors in the studio were busy discussing the recorders lying on the tarp, several paramedics carefully wheeled out a gurney bearing a white bundle.

“ _Pfui…_ ” Maxi crawled over and prodded Theresa in the side. “Tessa, is that…”

She winced, swatting Maxi’s hand away. “I think so.”

Sitting next to her, Douglas let his breath out through his teeth.

Another paramedic left the hangar, carrying a bundle of black cloth. A bit of it fell loose, and Theresa could pick out decoration on a jacket sleeve. Two silver bars…

“That’s Martin’s blazer,” she pointed, gasping. “He’s only got two bars, since he’s a junior first officer—that’s his. They must have—the pilots, they must have put...well, whoever that was…” Theresa shuddered momentarily and looked over her shoulder. “They must have put the...the body on top of their blazers.”

“I think those are _all_ pilots’ blazers,” Herc nodded, gripping the arm of the chair tightly. “Maybe…”

“We’re now receiving word that…” The anchor momentarily paused. “The one soul lost in the crash—you might be able to make out the ambulance carrying his remains in the back of that one shot—was...senior first officer Pierre Guerin, of Geneva, Switzerland.” He paused again, shuffling papers. “Swiss Air has released a statement, saying that First Officer Guerin had...had served as a pilot for the airline since its days as a regional carrier, and only recently switched to long-haul flights. In light of the current investigation, they are not yet able to enlighten the public or the family of the circumstances behind his death, but they send their deepest condolences to the family of...to his family and to his friends, my apologies.”

Theresa looked down at her phone again, ignoring a text from Franz, and bit her lip. “Then the other pilot they showed…”

“Hans Vogel,” Douglas read from her phone.

“Right.” She locked her phone and looked back up at the screen, where the footage had cut to the ambulance moving slowly down the runway, a paramedic handing the pilots back their blazers as they stood by the side of the tarmac and watched their colleague being carried away. There were only two of them—perhaps Leonie had sustained an injury and been taken away by a paramedic for examination? Groups of passengers were also pointing at the vehicle, gathering to see it off. “Oh…” Theresa put her fingers to her lips lightly, riveted.

“That could have been…” Carolyn began to voice the thought they all shared, but stopped herself. “First Officer,” she said by way of explanation.

“I would...no, I won’t speculate,” Herc said, stopping himself short as well. 

“Martin’s okay,” Theresa murmured. “He’s okay. I saw him standing there. I saw him talking. I saw him moving. He’s okay.”

“If you want,” Carolyn cut in apologetically, “we can turn it off. We could try and do something else until more information comes in. I didn’t mean to…”

“No,” Theresa shook her head, keeping her eye on the shortest of the three pilots, who was bowing his head as the ambulance rolled past. She wished she were there—she wished they were all there right now, to take him in their arms and tell them that it would all be okay, that he was safe and that they loved him. “It’s fine. I’m okay. We’re okay.” She turned around and smiled at Carolyn—a little bit of a strained one, granted, but a smile nevertheless. “He’s okay.”

* * *

“They’re only limiting time on the hotspot to a few minutes,” Franz warned over the phone. “The call will last only about five minutes at most.”

“That’s fine. Five minutes are all I need—all _we_ need.” Theresa nodded over to Douglas, who was endeavoring to hover without looking like it. 

“Now?” Douglas mouthed, raising his eyebrows.

Theresa shook her head. “Any minute now,” she mouthed back, and Douglas nodded and hurried off to find the others.

“Any information on when they’ll...return?” Theresa asked Franz.

“So far, they’ve been assessing the injured on-site. They’re marking them as priority transport. All the uninjured will be evacuated afterward.”

“True.” Theresa massaged her forehead, feeling a brief swoop of guilt. She hadn’t even considered that there could be, that there even _were_ more seriously injured passengers and crew. All she had been thinking of was getting Martin back. “Well. Okay, well...let me know if anything more’s announced, please.”

“I will. Stay well.”

“Well?” Carolyn asked expectantly, entering the room with Herc as Theresa ended the call with Franz. “He will call?”

“Any moment today.”

“What’s going on?” Arthur asked. He let Snoopadoop climb from his arms down onto the floor and took a seat next to Theresa, leaning into her.

“So, the rescue teams have brought in a mobile hotspot for the passengers and crew to take turns using so they can get in touch with their families.” Theresa flipped her phone over and began turning it over and over in her hands. “They say they’ve shored it up—I mean, the signal—so that people can start making calls today. We’re hoping that maybe...maybe Martin will be able to—”

Suddenly, Theresa’s phone rang again, and she flipped it over to check the caller. 

_Martin Crieff, mobile_

“Oh my God!” Theresa looked around. Carolyn and Herc had managed to share a chair and were tightly clasping each others’ hands. “It’s him! He must’ve been one of the first in line—”

“Answer it!” Douglas sat down in the nearest chair, Maxi coming around him to perch on the arm of the sofa next to Theresa.

She shakily pressed the _Answer Call_ button, then speakerphone. “Martin?” she asked a little breathlessly. 

Silence from the other end.

“Martin…?”

And then it came. “Sorry! Sorry, hello, hi, um, er…Theresa!”

 _“Martinli!”_ A silly grin stretched itself across Theresa’s face, and the whole group erupted into relieved laughter and smiles. Attempting to contain himself, Arthur threw his arms around her and buried his face in her shoulder. 

“Who’s that with you?” Martin asked eagerly from the phone. 

“Oh, everyone!” Laughing, Theresa reached up and ruffled Arthur’s hair, turning her head away from her phone and momentarily closing her eyes in relief.

“ _Everyone_ as in your family, or as in OJS? You’re all in Zurich?”

“Yes, everyone as in OJS; no, we’re all in Fitton. Maxi too. I’ll explain when you come home.” _When you come home._ It wasn’t an _if_ anymore, it was a _when._ Giddiness threatened to consume her whole, and Theresa only just managed to rein in her emotions. They didn’t have much time, after all. “But Martin, enough about _us!_ We want to hear from you!”

“Yes,” Douglas agreed.

“That’s...Douglas! That’s Douglas!” A hint of a laugh crept into Martin’s tone. “I’d know that voice anywhere! Hi Douglas! Hi!”

“We’re here too,” Carolyn yelled from across the room, and Theresa held the phone out to her to capture her voice. “Me, Herc, and Arthur.”

“Hello! Oh my God, hi! Oh—” 

“But talk to us, Martin! By all means!” Carolyn interrupted him. “We want to hear from you.”

“Yes, Skip, come on!” Arthur encouraged.

“Oh, Arthur! Hello Arthur!” A hesitation. “Oh...yes, well, but...but I don’t know what to say. Um. I guess...well, over here it’s really snowy.”

“Yes, as is expected in rural northern Russia.” Douglas rolled his eyes, but everyone could see the absurdly happy grin on his face. 

“Douglas, _shush!”_ Theresa and Carolyn shut him down at the same time, then giggled.

“There’s...not many trees,” Martin was continuing. “Those that are, they’re...more like sticks.”

“Again, expected in the winter…” This time it was Herc’s turn to smirk at the ceiling.

“Oh stop it,” Theresa said to Herc. “Not you, _Spätzli_.” She turned back to the phone and smiled at it. 

“Oh. Oh my God wait, you’re calling me your little sparrow again! Right? I think that’s what you said?” Martin laughed nervously from over the line. “Okay. Um...I’m sorry. That was silly. I just wanted to know how you all are…”

“Martin, we’re _fine,_ ” Douglas leaned toward the phone. “We just want to hear from you, that’s all. It’s been a terrible couple of days without news or communications...of...well, whatever had become of you. So just...please talk to us. For however much time you have left on the hotspot.”

“But I don’t know what to...what I should say.”

“Martin,” Theresa brought the phone a little closer to her. “Don’t _worry_. Really, we care more about hearing your voice, knowing you’re well. Are you okay? Like, physically okay? You’re not...injured?” 

“No, no I’m not injured.”

“Have they told you when you’ll be able to get home?” Arthur asked, rising and bending over Theresa’s phone. Nodding, Theresa tried to offer it to him, but Arthur shook his head, putting his arms behind his back.

“Well, they’ve been examining the plane and having us give preliminary statements—the pilots, I mean. They’ve listened to the recordings and have been doing investigations on-site, but they’re waiting for us to be transported to an area hotel. That’s where they’ll start to take our statements for the actual investigation. But today...I think someone on the team told us that the injured passengers will be examined at the local hospital, and then those of us living in Europe will be taken to Zurich in the next two days by some large military transport planes that are being loaned by the government. And then the main investigation will take place when we’re back in Switzerland...but honestly, it’s not like we don’t know what happened up there. And what was more of a priority—what _is_ more of a priority—is getting home. So that’s what we’ll be doing.”

“Oh, thank God,” Theresa sighed. “Well…” she trailed off, not really knowing what else to say, how else to prompt him to use up his last minutes on the phone. “Well, Martin...just...”

“Talk to us about _anything_ ,” Maxi interjected, the first words he’d spoken on the call. He leaned down, toward Theresa and her phone. “Anything in the world. If you can’t talk about yourself.”

Theresa looked up at Maxi and nodded approvingly.

“Maxi?” Martin was tentative. “Is...is that you?”

“Yeah.” Maxi looked down at his hands, knitted tightly together, his knuckles turning white. Theresa reached out to loosen her brother’s grip and his tense hands—small, still those of a child—to get them to loosen, and her heart ached.

“Hey, Maxi.” Martin paused. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I am.” Maxi bit his lip. “I am now. Martin…”

“Of course, Maxi?”

“Talk to us about...anything.”

Another pause from the other end of the line. Then finally—

“Well...erm...the Boeing 777 was the first commercial aircraft designed on a computer. It’s the largest twinjet in the world, and each of its engines—well, I mean, depending on the variant—but they’re bigger than the cabin of a 737. It's the best selling widebody jet in the world, and it's also been ordered and delivered more than any other airliner in the world. Erm...the wings, they’re swept back at an angle of about, I think around 32 degrees...and ooh, I saw recently on a blog that they’re bringing back the folding wingtips they offered at first for aircraft that might use facilities built for smaller models…”

Theresa closed her eyes, put her head back against the seat cushions, and smiled at the ceiling—not bothering to hide the tears now dripping off her jaw and down her neck.

* * *

Back in the arrivals terminal of Zurich airport for the first time in three days, Maxi pulled out his phone and opened a flight tracker app. 

Theresa looked over her younger brother’s shoulder and caught sight of the map it had opened to, little yellow planes swarming around the airport on his screen. “I’m not sure if it will show there,” she said, fidgeting with the edge of her jacket sleeve. “It’s a military plane, remember?”

“And even when they land, the pilots will likely be the last to enter the terminal,” Franz warned from Theresa’s other side. He and the rest of her team had done marvelous work the past few days, helping Theresa manage her work throughout that horrible wait for news and serving as representatives for her and the Crieff family at the crisis center. Theresa made a mental note to have the financial minister arrange for raises for the household staff. 

“Was worth a try,” Maxi shrugged, but pocketed his phone. “Where’s everyone?”

“They’ve left the apartments, but they’ll be here any moment. They won’t want to miss this.” In return for hosting her and Maxi in Fitton, Theresa had opened some of the guest rooms in the royal apartments for OJS. But now, waiting in the terminal, she kept her eyes on the TV monitors around the waiting area, all but a few of which were broadcasting a public news program’s special report on Flight 4176’s return. “Franz, didn’t you brief me that they would have the pilots participate in the…”

“The memorial ceremony? Yes, that’s right.” 

Theresa looked down at her shoes, not wanting to continue in pursuit of that topic. Her pumps were tan and low-heeled—her usual fare, nothing over-the-top. For the first time in days, she’d gathered enough mettle to dress as usual—as though she were meeting with Swiss officials or sitting with her Prime Minister or listening in at the United Nations. Neutral trouser suit, lapel pin, business as usual.

Part of that had been Maxi’s idea. They were dignitaries, he’d argued, and thus they should dress as such. She’d agreed, privately pleased that Maxi was giving thought to it at all. 

Dignitaries they were, but they were standing in an unobtrusive part of the concourse, far from the cordoned-off secure exit and away from the family members and friends now waiting in clusters with hand-drawn signs and flowers, stuffed animals and cameras at the ready.

“Theresa, hello!” a voice called from behind, and she turned.

“Arthur,” she held out her arms as he led the rest of OJS through the crowd to her, and they hugged one another tightly. “Today’s the day!”

“I know, isn’t it exciting?” he beamed in return. “Maxi,” he turned to her brother as Theresa stepped away. “You have the card we made yesterday?”

“Of course.” Maxi took an envelope from his back pocket and waved it in the air. 

“A card? I didn’t know you made one together,” Theresa’s eyebrows went up. 

“We worked on it on the way here,” Arthur explained. “It was Maxi’s idea, most of it. We thought he might like it.”

“Quite the little planning bug, are you, Maxi?” Theresa grinned down at her brother. “That was really considerate of you.” Of course there was something else she didn’t say—something she _couldn’t_ say, questions she couldn’t ask—not in front of Franz or anyone else.

_That’s really considerate of you. Hey, Maxi—I know I rag on you a lot, I know I nag at you all the time, I know I’m more of a mother than a sister to you, Maxi, but honestly. Between us, as brother and sister...I wanted to thank you. You know, for sticking with me through all of this. For caring about Martin as much as I do. I didn’t even know you did. I’m glad I found out, but I wish it hadn’t had to be because of this experience that I did._

_I didn’t know you cared about Martin like this. It means a lot, coming from the King of Liechtenstein—and this time I’m not making fun of you. Because as much as this might have changed our family, the simple truth is that they are still probably not ready to accept him the way you already have._

“Did _you_ plan for something to give Martin?” Douglas sidled over, finally able to fight his way through the crowds. His arms were crossed, but he had a pleased expression on his face and his excitement was palpable.

“Hi Douglas! Well…” In truth, Theresa hadn’t given much thought to it. The hours since she’d returned to Switzerland had been filled with updating her advisers, solving some minor disputes that had come up since she’d left, assuring the rest of her family that she was fine, and changing her clothes. “I was just thinking, _this,_ ” she managed a wry smirk and gestured at herself while striking a little pose.

“ _Pfui!”_ Maxi pretended to retch onto the floor. “That’s so _gross!_ Why do you have to be so _weird?”_

“Maxi. I’m _kidding.”_ Theresa rolled her eyes, and Douglas laughed at them both.

“Hello Theresa,” Carolyn called out, emerging from the crush of people with hands outstretched. Theresa offered her her own hands with a smile, and Carolyn grasped them tightly, smiling back at her.

“Everything okay at the apartments?” Theresa remembered to ask. “You slept well?”

“Oh, don’t worry about us,” Carolyn began, but looked away. “Wait. Theresa, look.” She put her hands on Theresa’s arms and turned her around to face the nearest television screen.

The crowd grew quiet as live footage of an Antonov transport aircraft touching down at Zurich’s north runway was broadcast. As the front landing gear touched the tarmac, some tentative cheers and applause broke out among those gathered in the concourse, and Theresa found herself suppressing a relieved laugh.

“I can’t wait,” she turned and grinned at her friends.

“Neither can we,” Herc replied, his smile just as big, and patted her shoulder.

They continued quietly chatting until an announcer’s voice broke into their conversation. “Ladies and gentlemen, may we have your attention please. We ask for a moment of silence throughout Zurich International Airport this morning as the memorial ceremony for First Officer Pierre Guerin of Swiss Air begins. Thank you.”

As the announcement was repeated in the other Swiss languages, Theresa felt a hand steal into hers. Looking down, she saw Maxi tighten his grip on her hand, bite his lip, and look down at the floor.

She looked back at the screens to see footage of the hold of the Antonov opening, Swiss armed forces members in fatigues escorting a plain box covered with the Swiss flag from the plane. 

Not for the first time, Theresa was struck with a primeval feeling of cosmic emptiness.

This could have ended much differently for them all.

Another service member came forward, lay a folded canton flag from Geneva in the middle of the white cross, then stepped away.

And then there they were—the three surviving pilots, all in uniform, stepping out in single file. They were followed by another captain in uniform, who an anchor quietly introduced as the head of the Swiss Air pilots’ union, as well as the CEO of the airline.

Oskar Bider—this would have been the second time Martin had been in the vicinity of the Swiss Air CEO. He’d told her about his encounter with him during his interview, the misunderstanding, the way he’d compelled Mr Bider to give him ten minutes to prove himself.

Mr Bider stepped up to a podium hurried into place at the end of the hold ramp of the Antonov and tested the microphone before beginning to speak, reading from a sheaf of paper.

“Good morning,” he addressed the cameras in English. “This is an important day. We gather together to honor a life, as well as to mourn a passing. Our airport, which normally buzzes with activity, has come to a halt for this important moment as we stand—the Swiss Air family—to acknowledge that a colleague, a friend, a pilot has left us and, in doing so, changed our souls forever.

“Pierre Guerin’s life came to an untimely and tragic end almost a week ago. But his spirit and heroic life as a pilot made a difference—as a regional pilot and an ambassador of our airline outside of Europe, as well as in the last moments of his life as he helped to guide Flight 4176 to a safe landing, sacrificing himself in the process. First Officer Guerin will continue to make a difference—so long as all of you realize that you have become the representatives and the ambassadors of his legacy.

“To the passengers and crew of Flight 4176, for whom First Officer Guerin gave his life. His spirit of service, airmanship, and self-sacrifice lives on through you. Please, be kind and patient with one another as you come to a new normal. I realize that many things have changed for you. When you return to your friends, colleagues, and family in the arrivals terminal, you will not be the same. But you will not be alone, either. You all are forever connected through the heroic actions of First Officer Guerin and his colleagues. This message also goes to those waiting for their loved ones today in arrivals: Help each other. It is what Pierre Guerin died for, that you would be able to do so.

“Finally, on behalf of Swiss Air and the rest of the country, we send our deepest condolences to the family of First Officer Guerin, who have come from Geneva to be with us today. His memory will not only be preserved—his memory will also serve as a reminder to all of us at Swiss Air, of what it takes to serve the people who entrust their lives to us. Thank you.”

Mr Bider stepped from the podium and picked up a uniform hat from a small table next to it. He stepped over toward the pall-covered box, holding the hat as an elderly couple slowly approached—ostensibly, the parents of Pierre Guerin.

Theresa looked away again and saw Maxi slowly and deliberately incline his head.

Restraining the sudden mixture of pride and sorrow threatening to burst out of her, she imitated her brother and placed a hand over her heart—a universal gesture of respect.

As the ceremony came to a close and footage cut back to the anchors discussing the day’s events, the crowd began to murmur once more. This time, however, the atmosphere had changed. Everyone collectively became more subdued, much less exuberant.

Theresa reckoned that this all was just as terrible, just as solemn, as if there had been more dead to commemorate. For a life had been lost, and it had been a tragedy. She reckoned everyone was thinking along the same lines. Nobody else had died; why should Pierre? What had happened up there that—

Theresa shook her head to herself, watching Maxi and Arthur engage in animated conversation. That was the _investigators’_ job. Not hers.

Minutes passed; Theresa bounced on her toes a little, trying to shake away the excess energy threatening to spill over. 

A baggage cart rolled through the arrivals gate, followed by an apprehensive man pushing it and looking all about the concourse.

There was a split second of realization before the crowd erupted into cheers. 

A knot of people began to hold up signs, calling the man’s name, and the passenger found them in the crowd, rushed over, and fell into his family’s arms.

And more and more passengers were coming through the gate, pouring in with grins on their faces, some with tears streaming down their cheeks. Consoling loved ones, tousling children’s hair, tossing toddlers into the air and catching them again. Kissing spouses, simply standing still and embracing their friends, some being tossed from one family member or friend’s arms to another like they were participating in some kind of strange and novel sport.

“The pilots probably come last,” Theresa muttered to herself, crossing her arms. “They’ll probably come out last. They’ll come out last.”

“Need a hand?” Arthur asked at her elbow, putting a hand palm-up in her line of vision. Nodding distractedly, Theresa took it with both hands and held it tightly, continuing to bounce on her toes.

Passenger after passenger poured out of the gate, until Theresa noticed a lull in the flow of people. 

Looking back down at Maxi’s wide eyes, she could barely breathe.

“You think—” her brother began, but was cut off by thunderous applause.

Theresa looked back toward the gate, and _there they were—_ the three surviving pilots of Flight 4176, leading the rest of the cabin crew out into the arrivals concourse.

Hans Vogel, on the right, his flight bag in hand and looking a little taken aback by the momentous reaction. 

Leonie Moreau in the middle, sporting a neck brace but appearing quite amused by Hans’ reaction to the effusive praise.

And there he was—Martin Crieff, on the left, gripping his flight bag so hard his knuckles were turning white. Clean-shaven: of course he wouldn’t dare to have a hair out of place even though he’d been trapped in the Russian countryside for four days. He wasn’t paying any attention whatsoever to Leonie or Hans or even the camera flashes popping as the crew stood in front of the group and acknowledged their heroes’ welcome: though Theresa could tell he was trying hard to keep on a camera-ready face, his eyes darted from the cameras to the crowd around him.

Searching.

Maxi broke from Theresa’s side and began to dart through the crowd towards the pilots.

“ _Maxi,_ ” Theresa cried out, letting go of Arthur’s hand and following her brother. “Where are you—”

“Wait. Theresa!” Arthur called out behind her, but Theresa had wormed her way past a particularly large group of friends in pursuit of her brother’s bobbing head in the crowd.

“Maxi, get _back_ here!” Theresa hissed, dodging the applauding people and baggage carts. “Wait!”

A surge of people pressed forward, journalists and family members trying to get a word in to the pilots, and the crush of people freed up, if only for a second, before airport security stepped in to compel the public to keep their distance.

“Theresa!” she heard Douglas call out from behind, just as she stopped within earshot of Martin, who was being eagerly asked about how he felt by a journalist. 

Martin stuttered to a halt in whatever he was trying to say and looked quickly up in Theresa’s direction, probably hearing Douglas call out her name.

Was that wild expression on his face _hope,_ or was she just being wishful?

In the chaos, she saw him take hold of his bag and shake his head at the person trying to interview him as an officer came in between to hold off the tide of people.

A flash of sandy hair—Maxi rushing at Martin headlong, ignoring the officer holding back the crowd—Martin’s eyes widening in recognition—Martin ducking under the officer’s outstretched arm, leaving his bag behind, stretching his arms out—

Maxi tackled Martin around the waist and into what was probably the biggest hug of his life. Momentarily winded, Theresa saw Martin stagger back a few paces before looking down at the top of Maxi’s head. Puberty had yet to hit Maxi; he still only came up to Martin’s chin.

Disbelief quickly followed by incredulous joy and awe filled Martin’s face as he gazed down at Theresa’s younger brother and whispered something that looked like _Oh my God. Hi._

“You’re actually okay!” Maxi exclaimed, tearing himself away from Martin and looking back over his shoulder at Theresa, who was standing utterly still at a distance from the pair. Maxi looked up at her as if to say _What on earth are you waiting for? Come on!_

Martin looked over to Maxi, eyebrows furrowed, then followed her brother’s gaze up and through the crowd until his eyes rested on Theresa.

A rush of heat flamed into her face, across her cheeks, up into her ears. Martin’s eyes flicked from her hair, disheveled from fighting through the crowd—her eyes wide as she took him in—her mouth, half-open as she stood frozen before him—her lapel pin, knocked crooked from her desperate dash to the front of the group.

As if someone had taken a hammer to the back of her knees, she unfroze and barreled through the last remaining clusters of people toward him as he lunged forward and—

“ _Martinli—”_

“Theresa—”

And, suddenly, there was no barrier between them.

Yet they stopped within arms’ reach of the other, and as if some emotional drain stop had been pulled away, they burst out at the same time.

“Martin, I’m so sorry, I took you for granted and I’ve _been_ taking you for granted—”

“Theresa, I am truly so sorry I said what I said about you before I left—I called you a _burden_ —”

 _“I promise, I’ll be better!”_ they blurted out simultaneously, before freezing in shock and gaping at each other.

Then—inexplicably—they both began to giggle wildly, and Martin willingly fell into Theresa’s outstretched arms.

Martin leaned into the hug on the weight of his forearms, burying his head into the space where her neck met her shoulder and shaking all over.

“ _Spätzli,”_ Theresa murmured over and over again, sliding a hand up and into his hair, cupping the back of his head. “Oh, Martin— _Spätzli—_ oh, _Ich han dich gern,_ Martin, I missed you so much, I was terrified out of my mind—”

“I was too, I was so afraid…” 

“We’re here now,” Theresa pulled back and looked at him, this time _really_ looked at him. The hopeful expression on his face, his eyes wide and glowing, a happy little smile on his lips. “You’re here, and you’re okay—I couldn’t ask for anything else.”

“We survived this. I came home to you. I couldn’t ask for anything else,” Martin echoed, his smile growing wider.

Theresa grasped the sides of his face, beaming. “Martin. I’m making you a promise. I will be better from now on.”

“And I will too.” Martin nodded resolutely between her palms, and Theresa giggled a little. “I..I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Theresa! Martin! Maxi!”

The three of them turned, Theresa laying a hand on Martin’s arm, as the clusters of beaming families and friends of passengers gave way for OJS to fight their way through to the members of their family.

In a tiny compartment above a desolate plain, a pilot earned his new wings, and a princess and their little family waited for him to come home. And when he finally did, the beams on their faces could have rivaled those of the sun off of airplane wings, the wild exuberance of westward currents carrying metal fish across the sky sea—the exhilaration of leaving the ground far away and far behind.

**_End._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #  [click here for the alternate ending.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28782987)
> 
> For the sake of posterity, I have to make a little nitpicky confession: the Boeing 777 is ETOPS rated, and able to fly on one engine for about five hours' time. I took a _lot_ of creative license to foment maximum suspense and agony. So...I'm sorry about that.
> 
> As this work comes to a close, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for reading, leaving kudos, and/or commenting. It has been such a joy to write this over the past month. Being notified of people reading and enjoying this work, as well as reading your comments and opinions on my writing, have only added to that joy. I am deeply grateful.
> 
> Artwork is mine; you can find more (and also me) on tumblr at [knapp-shappeys.](https://knapp-shappeys.tumblr.com/)


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